BIRD PROTECTION IN CANADA 153 



every turn friends whom one knows ; it is like going down Sparks street 

 and meeting all one's most pleasant acquaintances in one afternoon. 



Domestication Probably every bird is capable of partial domestica- 

 of Humming- tion while in the wild state. I was very much interested 

 ^"^^ a couple of years ago at a meeting of the American 



Ornithologists' Union in a paper by Miss Sherman on The Taming of 

 the Wild Humming-bird. I suppose the small size of the humming- 

 bird and its almost insect-like character had given me the feeling that 

 it was incapable of domestication or of knowing its friends but she 

 demonstrated that she had domesticated them to some extent. She 

 actually tamed them so that they came and buzzed around her head 

 for food. She began with bottles of syrup hidden in the base of a 

 gaudy artificial flower ; from that she progressed to the bare bottle and 

 the humming-birds came most freely; they quite expected the syrup 

 and promptly demanded it from her if the bottle were found at any 

 time empty. 



Jack Miner's From the humming-bird perhaps the longest step we 

 ^M:h WUd"*^ can take is to the wild goose, one of the wildest as 

 Geese well as largest of our birds. Jack Miner at Kingsville 



has the most spectacular demonstration every year on his farm of the 

 possibility of temporary domestication of this bird. One morn- 

 ing last April, 1,000 wild geese came to his farm, all of which lit 

 within 150 yards of his house. Many of them — by actual count 425 

 geese — were in the small enclosure right in front of his dining-room 

 window. I went into the enclosure with him and found it quite 

 possible to walk to within fifteen or twenty feet of the nearest goose; 

 but, when those geese were out on the lake, two miles distant, it was 

 exceedingly difficult to get a boat within half a mile of them. In one 

 case, they knew absolutely they were on safe ground and in the other 

 case they suspected danger, because man is a dangerous animal. To 

 them, however, the man who goes around Jack Miner's place is safe and, 

 therefore, they are not in the least alarmed. It seems that the birds 

 have methods of communication, not only between members of their 

 own species, but with others, because one day during last year's migra- 

 tion, while the geese were visiting Miner's place, on four different 

 occasions flocks of wild swans flew over, apparently to see if these 

 stories the geese were telling about the safety and pleasant conditions 

 on Miner's farm were true. But while the swans found they were 

 apparently true, because the geese were down in the ponds on the farm, 

 they felt like the farmer who, seeing the giraffe at a menagerie, said : 

 " There ain't no such animal." The swans looked at the geese and 



