How Animals Talk 



excited, and perhaps all ready to protect some 

 innocent nest from snake or crow or squirrel. 

 Because the response is most electric at the season 

 when fledglings are most helpless, you are apt to 

 think that this call of yours is mistaken by mother 

 birds for a cry for help. That may be true; but 

 be not too sure about it. The fledglings them- 

 selves will come almost as readily to the call when 

 the nesting season is over and gone. 



I have tried that same exciting summons in many 

 places, wild or settled, and commonly but not 

 invariably with the same result, as if it were a 

 word from the universal bird language. Once in a 

 secluded valley of northern Italy I saw a hunter 

 with his gun, and promptly forgot my own errand 

 in order to chum with him and find out what he 

 had learned of the wood folk. He was hunting 

 birds to eat. "Those birds there!" he said, point- 

 ing to a passing flock which I did not recognize, 

 but which seemed pitifully small game to me. 

 Presently I learned that he could not shoot flying, 

 and was having such bad luck that, he said, the 

 devil surely had a hand in it. He was a smiling, 

 companionable loafer, and for a time I tagged 

 after him, watching him amusedly as he made 

 careful but vain stalks of little birds that seemed 

 to have been made wild by much hunting. In a 

 spirit of thoughtless curiosity, and perhaps also 



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