XVII 
TAMENESS OF THE BIRDS 
425 
numbers. It is surprising that they have not become wilder ; 
for these islands during the last hundred and fifty years have 
been frequently visited by bucaniers and whalers ; and the 
sailors, wandering through the woods in search of tortoises, 
always take cruel delight in knocking down the little birds. 
These birds, although now still more persecuted, do not 
readily become wild : in Charles Island, which had then been 
: colonised about six years, I saw a boy sitting by a well with a 
switch in his hand, with which he killed the doves and finches 
as they came to drink. He had already procured a little heap 
of them for his dinner ; and he said that he had constantly 
been in the habit of waiting by this well for the same purpose. 
It would appear that the birds of this archipelago, not having 
as yet learnt that man is a more dangerous animal than the 
tortoise or the Amblyrhynchus, disregard him, in the same 
manner as in England shy birds, such as magpies, disregard 
the cows and horses grazing in our fields. 
The Falkland Islands offer a second instance of birds with 
a similar disposition. The extraordinary tameness of the little 
Opetiorhynchus has been remarked by Pernety, Lesson, and 
other voyagers. It is not, however, peculiar to that bird : the 
Polyborus, snipe, upland and lowland goose, thrush, bunting, 
and even some true hawks, are all more or less tame. As the 
birds are so tame there, where foxes, hawks, and owls occur, 
we may infer that the absence of all rapacious animals at the 
Galapagos is not the cause of their tameness here. The up¬ 
land geese at the Falklands show, by the precaution they take 
in building on the islets, that they are aware of their danger 
from the foxes ; but they are not by this rendered wild towards 
man. This tameness of the birds, especially of the waterfowl, 
is strongly contrasted with the habits of the same species in 
Tierra del Fuego, where for ages past they have been persecuted 
by the wild inhabitants. In the Falklands, the sportsman may 
sometimes kill more of the upland geese in one day than he can 
carry home; whereas in Tierra del Fuego, it is nearly as 
difficult to kill one, as it is in England to shoot the common 
wild goose. 
In the time of Pernety (1763) all the birds there appear 
to have been much tamer than at present; he states that the 
Opetiorhynchus would almost perch on his finger; and that 
