OF WILD ANIMALS 185 



expanse. Each hut and garden is believed to be the work of 

 a single pair of birds. The use of the hut, it appears, is solely 

 to serve the purpose of a playing-ground, or as a place wherein 

 to pay court to the female, since it, like the bowers built by its 

 near relatives, are built long before the nest is begun, this, by 

 the way, being placed in a tree." 



Most Birds Fear Man. With the exception of those that 

 have been reared in captivity, nearly all species of wild birds, 

 either in captivity or out of it, fear the touch of man, and shrink 

 from him. The birds of the lawn, the orchard and the farm are 

 always suspicious, always on the defensive. But of course there 

 are exceptions, A naturalist like J. Alden Loring can by patient 

 effort win the confidence of a chickadee, or a phoebe bird, and 

 bring it literally to his finger. These exceptions, however, are 

 rare,' but they show conclusively that wild birds can be educated 

 into new ideas. 



The shrinking of wild birds from the hand of man is almost 

 as pronounced in captivity as it is in the wilderness, and this 

 fact renders psychological experiments with birds extremely 

 difficult. It is really strange that the parrots and cockatoos 

 all should take kindly to man, trust him and even like him, 

 while nearly all other birds persistently fly, or run, or swim or 

 dive away from him. A bird keeper may keep for twenty 

 years, feeding daily, but his hawks, owls and eagles, the perchers, 

 waders, swimmers and upland game birds all fly from him in 

 nervous fear whenever he attempts to handle them. The ex- 

 ceptions to this rule, out of the 20,000 species of the birds of 

 ,the world, are few. 



Wild Birds that Voluntarily Associate with Man. The 

 species that will do so are not numerous, and I will confine 

 myself to some of those that I have seen. 



The Indian adjutant, the mynah, hoopoe, vulture, robin, 

 phoebe bird, bluebird, swallow, barn owl, flicker, oriole, jay, 

 magpie, crow, purple grackle, starling, stork, wood pigeon, 

 Canada goose, mallard, pintail, bob white and a few other species 



