Some Habits and Instincts of Young Birds. $7 



"well within striking distance ; they have not to learn 

 this distance by experience. To peck at an object of a 

 certain size, just within easy reach, is a definitely con- 

 genital response, and not the result of acquired skill. In 

 nearly all cases, as one might expect, the simpler process 

 of striking is more accurate than the more complicated 

 process of striking and seizing ; and this, again, than the 

 yet more elaborate process of striking, seizing, and 

 swallowing. Nevertheless, this yet more complicated 

 activity, or train of activities, is performed so soon, and 

 with so few trials — often at the third or fourth attempt — 

 that one must regard the whole as essentially congenital 

 in its definiteness, and look upon the few preparatory efforts 

 as merely the steadying of the inherited organic apparatus 

 to its work. 



Of the birds which I have had under observation, 

 partridges, both English and French, pecked earlier and 

 with better aim than any others, but soon desisted if what 

 they pecked at was not satisfactory. Plovers (my observa- 

 tions were on the common peewit or lapwing) were slow 

 to peck, and their co-ordination seemed relatively poor. 

 Chicks and guinea-fowl were about on a par ; pheasants 

 somewhat less keen. Ducklings — those of wild ducks and 

 tame ducks being, so far as I could note, equal in this 

 respect — peck early and with fair aim, but they do not 

 seize and swallow so readily. They mumble what they 

 seize, and often shake it out of the bill unswallowed. 

 Moorhens show a somewhat different instinctive tendency. 

 From the first they crouch down with the head and neck 

 held back, and the skinny little wings working to and 

 fro ; in this attitude they open their beaks more like the 

 callow young of jackdaws or other nursling birds than 

 the young of fowls or pheasants. They soon strike, how- 

 ever, with fair accuracy of aim, at objects held above them ; 



