OUR DOMESTIC BIRDS 



CHAPTER I 



BIRDS AND THEIR RELATIONS TO MAN 



Definition of a bird. A bird is a feathered animal. The 

 covering of feathers is the only character common to all birds 

 and not possessed by any other creature. The other characters 

 the bill, the wings, egg-laying, etc. by which we usually dis- 

 tinguish birds from animals of other kinds are not exclusive 

 bird characters. Turtles have beaks, and there is one species 

 of mammal (the ornithorhynchus) which has a bill like that 

 of a duck. Many insects and one species of mammal (the 

 bat) fly. Insects, fishes, and reptiles lay eggs, and there are 

 several rare species of mammals that lay eggs and incubate 

 them. On the other hand, some birds are deficient in one or 

 more of the typical bird characters. The ostrich cannot fly. 

 The penguin can neither fly nor run, and cannot even walk well. 

 The cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, leaving to 

 them the hatching and rearing of its young. These exceptional 

 cases are very interesting because they show that animals now 

 quite different in structure and habits had a common origin, but 

 in no case is there such a combination of characters that any 

 doubt arises whether the creature is a bird or a mammal. The 

 characters which typically belong to birds attain their highest 

 development in them, and in most cases this is due to peculiar 

 adaptabilities of the feathers. 



The Anglo-Saxons' name for a bird was fngol (the flying 

 animal). The young feathered creature they called bridd (the 



