BIRDS AT SCHOOL 117 



with these and with other young birds of any 

 sort, the sight of any of their brothers or 

 sisters who are slow to learn being seized and 

 devoured by an enemy soon makes the rest of 

 the family nervous. And it must always be 

 remembered that they have to learn about 

 enemies ; a young bird may be nervously 

 afraid of any bigger bird or of a four-footed 

 animal coming near him, but he does not 

 know, till he learns by observation, that a 

 hawk will behave differently from a pigeon, 

 or that a cat is not so harmless as a rabbit ! 



That some birds will learn more quickly 

 than others one can guess by rearing a family 

 of young birds ; you will often find among 

 them one very clever and one very stupid one, 

 and the others ordinary, as you may say ; 

 indeed their characters are quite different, 

 just as those of a family of children are. 

 But the most nervous ones, even if they are 

 not clever, often have a better chance to live, 

 for it is better that they should be frightened of 

 every big creature they see, till they learn the 

 different kinds, than that they should be too 

 unsuspicious of strangers. Where cleverness 

 will come in is when they begin to learn what 



