A Bird's Education 167 



of their own volition to pick up food after the manner of 

 the adults. At first they are very clumsy about it, but 

 they persevere until they acquire skill, and presently they 

 refuse entirely to open their mandibles for food. Here 

 again Nature is their sole guide. Without human or 

 avian suggestion they also learn to drink in the well- 

 known bird fashion; also to bathe, chirp, frolic, and do 

 many other things. Who has ever seen a pet bird in 

 drinking try to lap like a dog, or take in long draughts 

 like a cow or a horse ? No ; Nature made them birds, and 

 birds they will be. It is noticeable, too, that when birds 

 begin to peck, or bathe, or seek a perch, they do not 

 usually act as if they were deliberately planning to do so, 

 nor as if they were carrying on some process of thought 

 leading to choice, but rather as if they were impelled 

 by Nature to do so. 



The chirping of birds is mostly, if not wholly, a matter 

 of inheritance. For instance, my little wood thrushes, 

 as soon as they reached a sufficient age, called just like 

 their relatives of the sylvan solitudes ; my brown thrashers 

 uttered the labial chirp of the species; my red- winged 

 blackbird exclaimed "Chack! chack!" after the manner 

 of his kind; my bluebirds expressed their feelings in the 

 sad little purr of Sialia sialis; my flickers did not borrow 

 the calls of the red-heads, but each clung to its own lan- 

 guage ; my catbirds mewed like poor pussy in trouble ; and 

 so on through the whole list. True, these pets may have 

 heard their parents' calls before they were taken from 

 the nest, but it is not at all likely that they would have 



