THE MASTER INSTINCT 
a long and hazardous one. Among birds of prey the 
female is the larger, the bolder, and the more active. 
The parental instinct seems much stronger in her 
than in the male. 
The breeding-instinct has developed among the 
birds, especially among the ground-builders, one of 
the most surprising traits or practices to be found in 
all animate nature. I refer to the tricks and the 
make-believe that birds will resort to in order to 
decoy one away from their nests or their young — 
feigning lameness, paralysis, suffocation, anything 
to fix the attention of the intruder upon the mother 
and lure him away from her precious eggs or young. 
I can recall nothing else so extraordinary in the 
whole range of animal instinct. The bird suddenly 
becomes a consummate actor and plays a réle she 
probably never played before, and plays it in the 
best style of the art. Her behavior looks like the 
outcome of a sudden process of reasoning. “This 
creature,”’ it seems to say, “wants my brood, but I 
will make him want me, and forget the brood. To 
do so, I have only to throw myself in his way and 
offer him an easy victim. By my feigned disable- 
ment I can draw him on and on, while my young 
hide, or the clue to my nest is lost.” 
Last spring in a low, wooded bottom in Georgia, 
my friend and I started a woodcock from her nest, 
in which were three eggs. The bird flew a few yards, 
at a height of ten feet or more, and then suddenly 
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