CHAPTER VIII 



The senses of birds — Sight and its general high development — 

 Degree of perception of colour — Influence of colour, if any, 

 on courtship, and the segregation of species — ^Perception of 

 the colour in various kinds of food — Smell, usually poorly 

 developed — ^Exceptions noted — ^Acuteness of hearing — Sense 

 of touch — Taste-perceptidiis. 



The senses of birds are nearly all well developed, 

 though the mechanism of the sense-organs is some- 

 times much less elaborate than in the case of 

 mammals, an important instance of the want of 

 correlation of structure with function. In power 

 of sight they, as a rule, surpass all other animals, 

 this being the dominant sense in all birds except the 

 Apteryxes or Kiwis of New Zealand, which see very 

 badly, not only in the day, when they are naturally 

 at rest, but even at night, when they will walk 

 right up to a person when at large, and show no 

 alarm when a white handkerchief is waved at them 

 when in captivity. 



There is a possibility that there are great differ- 

 ences in the powers of distant sight of ordinary 

 birds, but there is little or no evidence so far on 

 thisi head. Macgillivray has indeed suggested in his 

 beok on British Birds that the Spariow-Hawk is 

 15 "S 



