THE HOME OF THE SWIFT. 91 



a stick it has dropped. The stupid daws will go miles in 

 search of materials for the nest when there is a great pile 

 of these at the foot of the Cathedral. 



Since the exception observed by Mr. Hudson serves to 

 prove the rule that, judged by human standards, birds have 

 but little intelligence, I will give it in his own words. " One 

 morning at Wells, as I stood on the Cathedral green, 

 watching the birds at their work, I witnessed a rare and 

 curious scene one amazing to an ornithologist. A bird 

 dropped a stick an incident that occurred a dozen times or 

 oftener any minute at that busy time ; but in this instance 

 the bird had no sooner let the stick fall than he rushed down 

 after it to attempt its recovery ; just as one may see a sparrow 

 drop a feather or straw, and then dart down after it and often 

 recover it before it touches the ground. The heavy stick 

 fell straight and fast on to the pile of sticks already lying 

 on the pavement, and instantly the daw was down and had 

 it in his beak, and thereupon laboriously flew up to his 

 nesting-place, which was forty to fifty feet high. At the 

 moment that he rushed down after the falling stick two other 

 daws that happened to be standing on ledges above dropped 

 down after him, and copied his action by each picking up 

 a stick and flying with it to their nests. Other daws followed 

 suit, and in a few minutes there was a stream of descend- 

 ing and ascending daws at that spot, every ascending bird 

 with a stick in his beak. It was curious to see that although 

 sticks were lying in hundreds on the pavement along the 

 entire breadth of the west front, the daws continued coming 

 down only at that spot where the first bird had picked up 

 the stick he had dropped. By and by, to my regret, the 

 birds suddenly took alarm at something and rose up, and 



from that moment not one descended 



For many mornings after, I continued to watch the daws 

 until the nest-building was finished, without witnessing any 

 fresh outbreak of intelligence in the colony : they had once 

 more shaken down into the old inconvenient traditional 

 groove." 



