22 BEHAVIOR OF PIGEONS. 



delivered in the same way and now again a third in the same manner. When the male 

 approaches the nest, the female continues her calls but bows each time and waves her closed 

 wings slowly up and down as if welcoming her mate. The female has turned in her nest 

 so that she faces in the opposite direction, and the male jumps on her back in delivering. 

 She has again turned, so that she now faces him as he arrives with her tail at the corner 

 of the cage; in this position he delivers without mounting, but he tries to side up to her so 

 that his head may point in the same direction as hers. In other words, he seeks to deliver 

 from above and behind, but omits the mounting, owing to the awkward or unfavorable 

 position which he can not well meet by mounting. 



On the following day I find that the male is still taking hay to the nest. Yesterday I 

 noted one case in which the female changed her position, so as to have her tail at the 

 corner of the cage and her head at the opposite side, so that she faced the male as he 

 arrived. I have just seen the taking of this position repeated and the male make two deliv- 

 eries. In the first instance he jumped onto her back and turned, placing his body parallel 

 with hers, and then placed the straw under her breast. In the second case he jumped on 

 her and stood at nearly right angles and placed the straw under her wing; the female 

 here turned her head to take the straw. The male's behavior in jumping onto the back 

 of the female is very probably a necessity in nature, since the male bird would usually 

 not find it possible to deliver otherwise; besides, his taking this position serves to test 

 the strength of the nest and of its support, and helps to keep the straws in place and well 

 pressed together. 



I now note that when the male flies to the perch he stands still for a few seconds, 

 about 3 to 5 seconds, as if to see that there is no danger of discovery before he visits his 

 mate. Wild birds generally are cautious in this way ; if they were otherwise their nests 

 would be easily discovered by enemies. I have found that the male passenger-pigeon 

 also delivers his straw or twig by mounting on the back of the female and placing it in 

 front of her in the place most convenient for her to receive it. 



All pigeons, so far as I know, carry but one straw at a time ; the sparrow, on the other 

 hand, loads itself up with as many pieces as it can hold in its mouth, and thus saves trips 

 to the nest. The sparrow's method is the more economical less wasteful of time and 

 energy. What an interesting step for a bird to learn to take many instead of one at a 

 time. In this simple difference of method we see a wide difference in intelligence. It is 

 not supposable that the step could have been first taken by the sparrow as a mere acci- 

 dent (without the aid of the intelligence above that of pigeons), and then confirmed as 

 a general habit through natural selection of the individuals who were lucky enough to 

 adopt it. The first impulse to pick up several straws instead of one implies greater intel- 

 ligence, and this superiority would be favored in the struggle for existence, in a thousand 

 different ways, of which that here considered is but one. 



The pigeon often shows great stupidity in gathering straw. If it happens to pick up a 

 stray straw on the side of the nest, instead of turning right around and delivering it, the 

 bird will often first fly off with it, as if in search of a new straw, and then fly back and give 

 it to its mate. I have often seen such performances. If the pigeon drops a straw in flight 

 to the nest it never stops to pick it up, but goes off again to find another. If a sparrow 

 drops a part of its load of straw it will often try, while still holding fast to what remains, 

 to catch it in mid-air, and will follow it to the ground if need be to recover it. Here 

 again the sparrow displays intelligence quite above that of the pigeon. 



ON THE PURPOSE op NEST-BUILDING. 



The following instance throws some light on the nest-building instinct : A pair of young 

 common pigeons only 30 days old were kept in a pen in my library. They occupied a 

 small nest-box with a nicely saucer-shaped nest. In this nest-box they were hatched and 



