130 Wild Birds. 



is seen to approach. They once had the habit of alighting on the roof of a tall building 

 near Wade Park, but after one of their number met with the mishap of falling down a 

 ventilating shaft this practice seems to have been abandoned. 



Audubon speaks of a pair of geese which bred for three years near the mouth of the 

 Green River in Kentucky, ' and of his experience in feeding them at the nest. The male 

 was at first very pugnacious, and once dealt him such a blow on the arm that he thought it 

 was broken. In the course of a week both birds would take the proffered corn, but never 

 allowed him to touch them. " Whenever I attempted this," says Audubon, " the male met 

 my fingers with his bill, and bit me so severely that I gave it up." Later he trapped the 

 entire family of eleven, pinioned them and turned them loose in his garden. He kept 

 the whole flock three years. The old birds did not breed again, but two pairs of the 

 young reared new broods. 



On One of his shooting excursions Audubon shot a wild goose, and on his return 

 sent it to the kitchen to be prepared for the table. The cook brought him an egg ready 

 to be laid. This was placed under a hen, and in due time produced a bird, which became 

 very gentle and would feed from the hand. When two years old it mated with a male 

 and reared a family. 



We have seen how fear may vanish before the surge of the parental impulse which 

 impels a bird to seek, nourish, and defend its offspring, even at the risk of life itself, and will 

 now consider how this instinct may be used in taming wild birds at the nest and in 

 bringing them to the hand. 



If young birds of those species in which the parental instincts are very strong, are 

 taken from the nest when nearly ready to fly, the old birds, especially if they be among 

 the class of tamer individuals, may be brought direct to the hand in a short space of 

 time. To their excited vision men are as walking trees. Their attention is riveted on 

 the young, and the man is nothing to them, providing he remains quiet, or moves 

 about with caution. Whatever fear remains is blocked by the stronger instinct to go 

 to their young. 



Every occasion on which the tent described in these pages is brought up to a nest 

 of young birds is a direct experiment in the taming process. No matter how far the 

 discipline is carried or how little permanency it may possess, the principle is always the 

 same. By this method wild birds, while the parental instincts are at their height, can be 

 tamed to a degree without use of a cage. In illustration of the process, we will select the 

 Robin and Chestnut-sided Warbler, although the experiments to be described were not 

 carried out with this end especially in view. In any case parental instinct is the chief 

 agent employed. 



The Robins now referred to have served so often in these pages as a text for the 

 illustration of habit and instinct that I need only say that they nested high in an oak tree 

 in some woods, and that the entire branch with the nest was carried to a perfectly bare 

 field on July 25th, when the young were a week old. At this new site the young passed 

 another week, taking their first flight at noon on the last day of the month. I was en- 

 camped beside them for parts of six days, and spent altogether twenty-four hours at their 

 nest. Although the familiar Robin is usually an easy mark for the bird-photographer, this 

 particular pair were extremely wary. They showed a bold front when openly assailed, 



1 Ornithological Biography, vol. iii., pp. 8, 9. 



