“Some months ago one of my chaprassis brought me a couple of baby red-vented bulbuls which had fallen out of a nest. They were unable to feed themselves, and were probably less than a week old. One met with an early death, and the survivor was kept in a cage. One day, while I was writing in my study, this young bulbul began scolding in a way that all bulbuls do when alarmed. On looking round, I discovered that a chaprassi had silently entered the room with a shikra on his wrist. The shikra is a kind of sparrow-hawk, common in India. That particular individual was being trained to fly at quail. It had never before been brought to my bungalow, nor is it likely that the captive bulbul, whose cage was placed in a small, enclosed verandah, had ever set eyes upon a shikra. It had left the nest before it was of an age at which it could learn anything from its parents. Its display of fear and its alarm-call were purely instinctive. Its inherited memory must have caused it to behave as it did. Speaking figuratively, its ancestors learned by experience that the shikra is a dangerous bird—a bird to be feared—and this experience has been inherited. To express the matter in more exact language, this inherited fear of the shikra is the product of natural selection. For generations those bulbuls who did not fear and avoid the shikra fell victims to it, while the more cautious ones survived and their descendants inherited this characteristic.
“Of all the arts practised by birds none is so wonderful as that of nest-building. If it can be demonstrated (as I believe it can) that this art is innate in a bird, then there is no difficulty in believing that all the other arts practised by the feathered folk are innate.
“Michelet boldly asserts that a bird has to learn how to build a nest precisely as a schoolboy has to learn arithmetic or algebra. By way of proof, he quotes the case of his canary—Jonquille. “It must be stated at the outset,” he writes, “that Jonquille was born in a cage, and had not seen how nests were made. As soon as I saw her disturbed, and became aware of her approaching maternity, I frequently opened her door and allowed her freedom to collect in the room the materials of the bed the little one would stand in need of. She gathered them up, indeed, but without knowing how to employ them. She put them together and stored them in a corner of the cage. . . . I gave her the nest ready made—at least, the little basket that forms the framework of the walls of the structure. Then she made the mattress and felted the interior coating, but in a very indifferent manner.”
Michelet construes these facts as proof that the art of nest-building is not innate in birds, but has to be learned. As a matter of fact they prove exactly the opposite. The Frenchman’s reasoning is typical of that of those persons who make their facts fit in with their theories. Michelet is blinded by his preconceived notions. He is unable to see things which should be apparent to all. If the art of nest-building is not innate, why did the canary fly about the room collecting the necessary materials and heap them in a corner of the cage? That she did not go so far as to build a nest is easily explained by the fact that she was not given a suitable site for it, that the necessary foundation of branches was not provided for her. As well might one say that a bricklayer did not know his trade because he failed to build a wall on the surface of the sea. When given the framework, Michelet’s untaught canary lost no time in lining it. The alleged act that the lining was not well done may be explained in many ways. Michelet may have imagined this, or the materials provided may not have been altogether suitable; moreover, Jonquille must have worked in haste, as the framework was presumably not given until the bird had collected all the material. Again, the nest was the first that that particular canary had built. Birds, like human beings, learn to profit by experience. Nest-building is an instinctive art, but intelligence may step in and aid blind instinct.
In this connection it is necessary to bear in mind that the nest is completed long before the young birds come out of the egg; that they leave, or are driven away from, the parents before the next nest-building season. If young birds are taught nest-building, who teaches them?
Proof of the instinctiveness of nest-building might be multiplied indefinitely. There are on record scores of instances of birds selecting impossible sites for their nests; these are cases of instinct that has gone astray. Again, the persistent way in which martins will rebuild, or attempt to rebuild, nests that are destroyed, shows to what an extent nest-construction is a matter of instinct. One more concrete piece of evidence must suffice. My friend, Captain Perreau, has, among other birds in his aviary at Bukloh, in the Himalayas, some grey-headed love-birds. This species has the peculiar habit of lining the nest with strips of bark, which the hen carries up to the nest amongst the feathers of the back. Captain Perreau started with two cock love-birds and one hen, and this last had the peculiarity of not carrying up the lining to her nest in the orthodox way; nevertheless, her daughter, when she took unto herself a husband, used to carry up bark and grass to her nest in the orthodox manner. “Why did this hen do this?” Captain Perreau asks. “Her mother could not have taught her. I have no other true love-birds; and my blue-crowned hanging parrakeets, or rather the hens, certainly do carry up to the nesting-hole bark, etc., but they carry it, not in the back, but tucked in between the feathers of the neck and breast.” This neat method of conveying material to the nest is, therefore, certainly an instinctive act, as is almost every other operation connected with nest-building.
To sum up. The parental teaching forms a far less important factor in the education of birds than many naturalists have been led by careless observation to believe. Birds may be said to be born educated in the sense that poets are born, not made. In each case education puts on the finishing touches to the handiwork of nature.
XLIV
BIRDS AT SUNSET
It is refreshing to watch the birds at the sunset hour. The fowls of the air are then full to overflowing of healthy activity.
In the garden the magpie-robin (Copsychus saularis), daintily clothed in black and white, vigorously pours forth his joyous song from some leafy bough. From the thicket issue the sharp notes of the tailor-bird (Orthotomus sutorius), the noisy chatter of the seven sisters (Crateropus), and the tinkling melody of the bulbul.