1 6 Travels in a Tree- top 



fear. Students of bird-ways should never for- 

 get this. The fly-catcher soon took a stand 

 wherefrom to observe me, and, if intently 

 staring at me for thirty seconds was not curi- 

 osity, what shall we call it? Is it fair to 

 explain away everything by calling it mere 

 coincidence ? It is a common practice, and 

 about as logical as the old cry of " instinct" 

 when I went to school. To have said, when 

 I was a boy, that a bird could think and could 

 communicate ideas to another of its kind, 

 would have brought down ridicule upon my 

 head out of school, and brought down some- 

 thing more weighty if the idea had been ex- 

 pressed in a " composition." I speak from 

 experience. 



To return to the cheerier subject of curi- 

 osity in birds : our large hawks have it to a 

 marked degree, and advantage can be taken of 

 this facl: if you wish to trap them. I have 

 found this particularly true in winter, when 

 there is a general covering of the ground with 

 snow. Food, of course, is not then quite so 

 plenty, but this does not explain the matter. 

 An empty steel trap on the top of a hay-stack 

 is quite as likely to be tampered with as when 

 baited with a mouse. The hawk will walk 



