STUDY OF BIRD BEHAVIOUR 



WITH A BIRD-WATCHER'S GUIDE 1 

 [F. B. KIRKMAN] 



I. INTRODUCTORY 



IN order to study birds in the wild state successfully, it is obviously not enough to go forth 

 with a binocular and watch them. One has to watch with a seeing eye. To do this it is 

 necessary to know what to look for ; there must be in one's mind definite questions to answer. 

 To go forth in search of facts needed to answer definite important questions, be the questions 

 great like those which occupied the mind of Darwin, or be they small, is an essential condition 

 of success in natural history. 



The fundamental questions that face the student of the behaviour of birds are the same as 

 those which face the student of animal behaviour in general. A brief statement of the nature 

 and scope of this latter study must .here suffice to indicate what these questions are. 



The word " behaviour," as commonly understood in this context, comprises all the bodily 

 activities of the animal considered as a unit e.g. its gestures, ways of feeding, of protecting 

 itself, of playing. 2 The word " animal " includes, of course, man. It is important, further, 

 to note that animal behaviour is not necessarily associated with consciousness or mental 

 process. It is conceivable that the lowest forms of animal life are without consciousness. 



There are three kinds of animal behaviour commonly distinguished instinctive, 

 intelligent, and rational. Instinctive behaviour is inherited or congenital. A familiar example 

 is supplied by the ejection of its fellow-nestlings by the young cuckoo, which is able to perform 

 this feat without previous experience ; it has no means of learning how to do it. The complex 

 nervous-muscular co-ordination involved is entirely inherited. 



Every animal, including man, comes into the world with a certain stock of instinctive ways 

 of behaving. This ready-made behaviour is, except in the case perhaps of the lowest forms of 

 life, capable of modification by experience. A chick just out of the egg will peck instinctively 

 at any small object within reach, whether it be eatable or not. Now if its instinctive behaviour 

 were incapable of modification, it would continue throughout its life to peck at a number 

 of useless objects only to have to drop them. This is not what happens. The chick learns to 

 recognise uneatable objects and to leave them untouched, thus saving itself much unprofitable 

 exertion. It learns by experience. Its behaviour, in so far as thus learnt or acquired, is termed 

 intelligent to distinguish it from instinctive behaviour, which is not learnt but inborn. Those 

 intelligent acts which become " mechanised " by repetition are termed " habits." 



The distinction between intelligent and rational behaviour is more difficult to define. It 

 lies chiefly in the capacity or incapacity to form a mental image sufficiently free to enter into 



1 My thanks are due to Professor Lloyd Morgan for very valuable comments on the matter of this chapter. 



2 Excludes, therefore, in the restricted sense here used, the activities of the animal's bodily parts considered as 

 units (cell unit, organ unit). 



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