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Carl Naether—Do Doves Tell Time ?



up to the ceiling to catch a fly to round off his unattractive but

healthy meal.


He is the most charming bird. He has never shown the slightest

fear of my two golden cocker spaniels who are always with me—in

fact the Malachite often flies down and walks about on the carpet

quite near to where the dogs are lying. He ignores strangers equally

and flies out of his cage and sets about his fly-hunting just the same

if the room is full of people or empty except for me. The room is a

large one with many windows and filled with orchids, and the Malachite

is a lovely sight as, with a true sense of his own decorative value, he

flies from flower to flower.



DO DOVES TELL TIME ?


By Carl Naether


It has always been somewhat of a puzzle to me how birds tell

w r hat time of day it is. This applies especially to the breeding season

when male and female take more or less regular turns first at keeping

the eggs, and later the young, warm. What tells the male bird, for

instance, how early in the morning to fly to the nest in order to relieve

his mate, who sits on the eggs all night, and so enable her to get food

and water ?


For answer to my queries, I turned to a pair of Harlequin or Cape

Doves that thrive in a large outdoor aviary together w T ith many kinds

of Finches and some Canaries. In flight these graceful little Doves,

with their hesitating wing motion and their very long, slender tail,

look like huge butterflies. The habitat of this charming little Dove is

tropical and Southern Africa.


It so happened that for several weeks my work during the forenoon

took me near these Doves’ aviary so that I had ample opportunity

to tell quite accurately at what time each morning Mr. Harlequin

would attempt to coax Mrs. Harlequin to leave her precious eggs.

Sometimes he had to coax her for a long time, but of that later.


My observations proper began on the first day of August when two

small white eggs appeared in a nest consisting of a few twigs carelessly

thrown together. It was built atop a little wooden box 5 feet above



