THE MASTER INSTINCT 



a long and hazardous one. Among birds of prey the 

 female is the larger, the bolder, and the more active. 

 The parental instinct seems much stronger in her 

 than in the male. 



The breeding-instinct has developed among the 

 birds, especially among the ground-builders, one of 

 the most surprising traits or practices to be found in 

 all animate nature. I refer to the tricks and the 

 make-believe that birds will resort to in order to 

 decoy one away from their nests or their young 

 feigning lameness, paralysis, suffocation, anything 

 to fix the attention of the intruder upon the mother 

 and lure him away from her precious eggs or young. 

 I can recall nothing else so extraordinary in the 

 whole range of animal instinct. The bird suddenly 

 becomes a consummate actor and plays a role she 

 probably never played before, and plays it in the 

 best style of the art. Her behavior looks like the 

 outcome of a sudden process of reasoning. "This 

 creature," it seems to say, "wants my brood, but I 

 will make him want me, and forget the brood. To 

 do so, I have only to throw myself in his way and 

 offer him an easy victim. By my feigned disable- 

 ment I can draw him on and on, while my young 

 hide, or the clue to my nest is lost." 



Last spring in a low, wooded bottom in Georgia, 



my friend and I started a woodcock from her nest, 



in which were three eggs. The bird flew a few yards, 



at a height of ten feet or more, and then suddenly 



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