328



On Morality in Birds.



corner, and, when I saw the cock bird carrying hay into the box

and the hen sufficiently interested to go up and inspect his work,

I thought I was in a fair way to attain success. I soon discovered,

as Morula boulboul did, that the hen was only laughing at us;

for no sooner did her father attempt to chase her, than she stood

her ground and brought him to a sense of his wrong-doing : she

would not even let him feed until she was satisfied, and it was

only at the middle of July that he recovered sufficient courage

to defend himself. I came down one morning and found th._

aviary a perfect litter of feathers, and it was easy to see that the

hen was the sufferer : he has vindicated his position as parent

and with that he now seems content.


In 1908 I bred two Diamond Doves, of which only one

lived and that a male. When in 1909 I caught up my examples

of this species in order to turn out a pair for breeding, I selected

the larger male, under the impression that it was sure to be the

father, and I turned it out with the hen. From the first she

attacked this male whenever he began to coo to her, pulling out

his feathers wholesale. However, as is usually the case when

two Doves are kept together (even when both are hens) she laid,

and he sat so steadily that for some time I thought he was dead ;

the eggs, however, were of course not fertile, and eventually

he came off and recommenced his pursuit of the hen. She was

more furious than ever and persecuted him so persistently that I

was not surprised when, one morning,. I found him dead on the

floor of the aviary. His coo was very weak compared with that

of the other male bird, and I do not doubt that I inadvertently

paired up mother and son with disastrous results.


Touching the question of vieum and tuum we all know

that birds have no conscience ; they rob one another whenever

the chance offers, and believe to the full in the doctrine of the

survival of the fittest. They do, however, sometimes seem to be

^ compassionate towards young birds left orphans, for I have

known a Robin to help to rear young Thrushes when a cat had

killed her own young and one of the parent Thrushes had been

shot; yet it is probable that this was only a way in which the

arrested feeding-fever was working itself out, and no more credit¬

able than is the love of female children for dolls.



