Bird Life Glimpses

by Edmund Selous

These nesting habits of the ostrich[22] seem to me to support my idea of the origin of nest-making. How strange, if “spasmodic” and “excited” actions have had nothing to do with it, that they should yet help, here, to make the nest! How strange that the cock ostrich, only, should make the depression, assuming that attitude in which he rolls when courting—or, rather, desiring—the hen, if this has no connection with the fact that it is he only (or he pre-eminently) who, in the breeding time, acts in this manner! In most birds, probably—though this has been taken too much for granted—those frenzied movements arising out of the violence of sexual desire, are more violent and frenzied in the male than in the female. In this way we may see, upon my theory, the reason why the cock bird so often helps the hen in making the nest; nor is it more difficult to suppose that the hen, in most cases, may have been led to imitate him, than it is to suppose the converse of this. We might expect, however, that as the process became more and more elaborate and intelligent, the chief part in it would, in the majority of instances, be taken by the female, as is the case; for as soon as a nest had come to be connected, in the bird’s mind, with eggs and young, then her parental affection (the “στοργἡ” of Gilbert White), by being stronger than that of the male, would have prompted her to take the lead. I can see no reason why acts which were, originally, nervous, merely—spasmodic, frenzied—should not have become, gradually, more and more rational. Natural selection would have accomplished this; for, beneficent as actions, blindly performed, might be to an animal, they would, surely, be more so, if such animal were able, by the exercise of its intelligence, to guide and shape them, in however small a degree. Thus, not only would those individuals be selected, who performed an act which was advantageous, but those, also, whose intelligence best enabled them to see to what end this act tended, and, so, to improve upon it, would be selected out of these. Such a process of selection would tend to develop, not only the general intelligence, but, in a more especial degree, intelligence directed along certain channels, so that the latter might be out of proportion to the former, and this is what one often seems to see in animals.

Thus, as it appears to me, instead of instinct having commenced in intelligence, which has subsequently lapsed, the latter may often have grown gradually out of the former, blind movements, as we may call them, coming, at length, to have an aim and object, and so to be rational ones. It may be asked, by what door could this intelligence, in regard to actions originally not guided by it, have entered? I reply, by that of memory. A bird does not make a nest or lay eggs once only, but many times. Therefore, though the actions by which the nest is produced, on the first occasion, may have no object in them, yet memory, on the next and subsequent ones, will keep telling the bird for what purpose they have served. Such individuals as remembered this most strongly, and could best apply their recollections, would have an advantage over the others, for their actions would now be rational, and, being so, they would be able to modify and improve them. Their offspring would inherit this stronger memory and these superior powers, and also, probably, a tendency to use them both, in the same special direction. Whether knowledge itself may not, in some sort of way, be inherited, is, also, a question to be asked. If a bird instinctively builds a nest, may it not instinctively know why it does so? If there is any truth in these views, we ought to see, in some of the more specialised actions of animals—and, more particularly, of birds—a mingling, in various proportions, of intelligence and blind, unreasoning impulse. This, to my mind, is just what we do see, in many such; as, for instance, in the courting or nuptial antics, in those other ones, perhaps more extraordinary, which serve to draw one’s attention from the nest or young, and, finally, in the building of the nest. Not only do the two elements seem mingled and blended together, in all of these, but they are mingled in varying proportions, according to the species. No one who has seen both a snipe and a wild duck “feign,” as it is commonly called, being disabled, can have helped noticing that far more of intelligence seems to enter into the performance of the latter bird, than into that of the former. The moor-hen is not a bird that is known in connection with any special ruse or device for enticing intruders from its young, but I have seen one fall into a sort of convulsion, on the water, upon my appearing, very suddenly, on the bank of a little stream where she was swimming, with her young brood. The actions of a snipe, startled from its eggs, were much more extraordinary, and equally, as it seemed to me, of a purely nervous character.[23] Here, surely, we must have the raw material for that remarkable instinct, so highly developed in some birds, by which they attract attention from their young, towards themselves. But, if so, this instinct is not lapsed intelligence, but, rather, hysteria become half-intelligent. The part which mere muscular-nervous movements may have played, under the agency of natural selection, in the formation of some instincts, has not, I think, been sufficiently considered.

There is another class of facts which, I think, may be explained on the above view of the origin of the nest-building instinct. Some birds pair, habitually, on the nest, whilst a few make runs, or bowers, for the express purpose, apparently, of courting, and where pairing, not improbably, may also take place. Now, if the ancient nest had been, before everything, the place of sexual intercourse, we can understand why it should, in some cases, have retained its original character, in this respect.

What, now, is the real nature of those frenzied motions in birds, during the breeding season, before they have passed, either into what may properly be called courting antics, or the process of building a nest? I have described what the peewit actually does, and I suggest that the rolling of a single bird differs only, in its essential character, from actual coition, by the fact of its being singly performed, and that, thus, the primary sexual instinct (der thierische Trieb) directly gives birth to the secondary, nest-building one. It is true that the pairing, when I saw it, did not take place on the same spot where the rolling afterwards did. Nevertheless, the distance was not great, and it varied considerably. The run, which preceded the rolling, commenced immediately on the consummation of the nuptial rite, as though arising from the excitation of it—as may be seen with other birds; and if this run, which varied in length, were to become shorter and ultimately to be eliminated altogether, the bird would then be pairing, rolling, and at last, as I believe, laying its eggs in one and the same place.[24] Supposing this to have been originally the case, then the early nest would have been put to two uses, that of a thalamum and that of a cradle, and to these two uses it is in some cases put now, as I have myself seen. That out of one thing having two uses—“the bed contrived a double debt to pay”—there should have come to be two things, each having one of these uses—as, e.g., the nest proper and the bower—or that the one use should have tended to eclipse and do away with the other, is, to my idea, all in the natural order of events; but this I have touched upon in a previous chapter. To conclude, in the peewit movements of a highly curious nature immediately succeed, and seem thus to be related to, the generative act, and whilst these movements in part resemble that act, and bear, as a whole, a peculiar stamp, expressed by the word “sexual,” some of them, not separable from the tout ensemble, of which they form a part, suggest, also, the making of a nest; and, moreover, something much resembling a peewit’s nest is, by such movements, actually made.

Taking all this together, and in conjunction with the breeding and nesting habits of the ostrich and some other birds, we have here, as it seems to me, an indication of some such origin of nest-building, amongst birds, as that which I have imagined. That the art is now, speaking generally, in such a greatly advanced state is no argument against its having thus originated, since there is no limit to what natural selection, acting in relation to the varying habits of each particular species, may have been able to effect. Certainly, the actual evidence on which I found my theory, though it does not appear to me to be weak in kind, is very scanty in amount. To remedy this, more observation is wanted, and what I would suggest is that observant men, with a taste for natural history, should, all over the world, pay closer attention to the actual manner in which birds do all that they do do, in the way of courting, displaying, anticking, nest-building, enticing one from their young, fighting, &c. &c.—all those activities, in fact, which are displayed most strongly during the breeding season. I do not at all agree with a certain reviewer of mine, that the scientific value of such observations has been discounted by Darwin—as if any man, however great, could tear all the heart out of nature! On the contrary, I believe that the more we pry the more will truth appear, and I look upon mere general references, such as one finds in the ordinary natural history books, as mere play-work and most sorry reading for an intellectual man. What is the use of knowing that some bird or other goes through “very extraordinary antics in the season of love”? This is not nearly enough. One requires to know what, exactly, these antics are, the exact movements of which they consist—the minutest details, in fact, gathered from a number of observations. When one knows this one may be able to speculate a little, and what interest is there, either in natural history or anything else, if one cannot do that? Mere facts are for children only. As they begin to point towards conclusions they become food for men.

In the study of bird-life nothing perhaps is more interesting than the antics of one sort or another which we see performed by different species, and the nature and origin of which it is often difficult to understand. As has been seen, I account for some of these through natural selection acting upon violent nervous movements, the result either of sexual or some other kind of emotion—as, for instance, sudden fright when the bird is disturbed on the nest, or elsewhere, with its young, producing a sort of hysteria or convulsion; others I believe to be due to what instinct, generally, is often supposed to be, namely, to the lapse of intelligence. I believe that if a certain action or set of actions is very frequently repeated, it comes to be performed unintelligently; nay, more, that there is an imperious necessity of performing it, independently of any good which it may do. It is watching birds fighting which has led me to this conclusion. Far from doing the best thing under the circumstances, they often appear to me to do things which lead to no particular result, neglecting, through them, very salient opportunities. A striking instance of this, though not quite of the kind that I mean, is offered by the stock-dove, for when these birds fight, they constantly interrupt the flow of the combat, by bowing in the most absurd way, not to one another, but generally, so to speak, for no object or purpose whatever, apparently, but only because they must do so. The fact is, the bow has become a formula of courtship, and as courting and fighting are intimately connected, the one suggests the other in the mind of the bird, who bows, all at once, under a misconception, and as not being able to help it. But though there is no utility here, it may be said that there is a real purpose, though a mistaken one, so that the bird is not acting automatically. It is in the actual movements of the fight itself—in the cut and thrust, so to speak—that I have been struck by the automatic character impressed upon some of them. This was especially the case with a pair of snipes that I watched fighting, by the little streamlet here, one morning, perhaps for half-an-hour. They stood facing each other, drawn up to their full height, and, at or about the same instant, each would give a little spring into the air, and violently flap the wings. I would say that they struck with them—that manifestly was what they should have done, the rationale of the action—but the curious point is that this did not seem to be necessary, or, at any rate, it was often, for a considerable space of time, in abeyance. The great thing appeared to be to jump, and, at the same time, to flap the wings, and as long as the birds did this, they seemed satisfied, though there was often a foot or more of space between them. Sometimes, indeed, they got closer together, and then they had the appearance of consciously striking at one another; but having watched them attentively, from beginning to end, I came to the conclusion that this was more apparent than real, and that, provided the wings were waved, it mattered little whether they came in contact with the adversary’s person, or not. For when these snipes jumped wide apart, or, at any rate, at such a distance that each was quite beyond the other’s reach, they did not seem to be struck with the futility of hitting out, under these circumstances, or to be greatly bent on closing, and putting an end to such a fiasco. Far from this, they went on in just the same way, and, for one leap in which they smote each other, there were, perhaps, a dozen in which they only beat the air. I do not mean to suggest that the birds were not actually and consciously fighting, but it certainly did seem to me that their principal fighting action—the blow, with the leap in the air, namely—had become stereotyped and, to some extent, dissociated from the idea of doing injury, in which it had originated. It seemed, in fact, to be rather an end in itself, than a means to an end. Another and very noticeable point, which helped to lead me to this view, was that, except in this way, which, as I have said, was mostly ineffective, the birds seemed to have no idea of doing each other harm. Often they would be side by side, or the beak of the one almost touching the back or shoulder of the other. Yet in this close contiguity, where the one bird was often in a position very favourable, as it seemed, for a non-specialised attack, no such attack was ever made; on the contrary, to go by appearances, one might have thought them both actuated by a quite friendly spirit. After about half-an-hour’s conflict of this description, these snipes flew much nearer to me, so that I could see them even more distinctly than I had done before. I thought, now, that I saw a perplexed, almost a foolish, look on the part of both of them, as though they had forgotten what, exactly, was the object which had brought them into such close proximity; and then, each seeming to remember that to jump and flap the wings was the orthodox thing to do, they both did it, in a random and purposeless sort of way, as though merely to save the situation. This was the last jump made, and then the affaire appeared to end by the parties to it forgetting what it was about, or why there had been one. My idea is that such oblivion may prevail, at times, during the actual combat, which becomes, then, a mere set figure, an irrational dance or display, into which it might, by degrees, wholly pass.

There was another point of interest in this interesting spectacle. The birds, when they were not actually springing or flapping, mutually chased, or, rather, followed and were followed by, each other. But this, too, seemed to have become a mere form, for I never saw either of them make the slightest effort to dash at and seize the other, though they were often quite at close quarters and never very far apart. When almost touching, the foremost bird would turn, upon which the other did also, as a matter of course, but instead of running, walked away in a formal manner, and with but slightly quicker steps. The whole thing had a strange, formal look about it. When this following or dogging—chasing it cannot properly be called—passed into the kind of combat which I have described, it was always in the following manner. The bird behind, having pressed a little upon the one in front, instead of making a dash at him—as would have seemed natural, but which I never once saw—jumped straight into the air, flapping its wings, and the other, turning at the same instant, did likewise, neither blow, if it could indeed be called one, taking effect. The two thus fronted one another again, and the springing and flapping, having recommenced, would continue for a longer or shorter period. When these snipes leaped, their tails were a little fanned, but not conspicuously so. Another thing I noticed was, that the bird retreating often had its tail cocked up perpendicularly, whereas this was not the case with the one following.

Both the two points that struck me in the fighting of these snipes, viz. the apparent inability to fight in any but one set way, and the formal, alternate following of, and retreating from one another, I have noticed, also, in the fighting of blackbirds, and other birds, whilst the last has been pushed to quite a remarkable extreme in the case of the partridge. Pairs of these birds may be seen, as early as January, running up and down the fields—often along a hedge, or, here, a row of pine trees—as though to warm themselves, but really in pursuit of one another, though the interval between them is often so great that, but for both turning at the same precise instant of time, one would think they were acting independently. This interval may be as much as a hundred yards, or even more, and it is often exactly maintained for a very long time. At any moment the two birds, whilst thus running at full speed, may turn, and the chase is then continued in exactly the same way, except that it is now in an opposite direction, and that the pursuer and pursued have changed parts. Apollo—one might say, were the sport of an amorous nature—has become Daphne, Daphne Apollo; for as each turns, each becomes actuated by the spirit that, but a second before, had filled the other—a complete volte face upon either side, both spiritually and corporeally. Keepers have, in fact, told me that it is the male and female partridge, who thus chase one another; but this, from my own observation, I do not believe. Often, indeed, the birds will get out of sight before the interval between them has been lessened, or the pursued one will fly off, followed by his pursuer, without anything in the nature of a combat having occurred. At other times, however, the distance separating the two is gradually diminished, the turns, as it lessens, become more and more frequent, and, at length, a sort of sparring scuffle takes place, in which beak as well as claw is used. One of the birds has been run down, in fact, but the odd thing is that, as soon as it escapes, it turns round again, upon which the other does also, and the scene that I have described recommences. Now why should a bird that has just had the disadvantage in a struggle, and is being pursued by the victor, turn so boldly round upon him, and why—this in a much higher degree—should that victor, with the prestige of his victory full upon him, turn, the instant the bird he has vanquished does, and run away from him like a hare? In all this there appears to me to be something unusual, suggesting that what was, originally, an act of volition, is now no longer so, but has become an automatic reaction to an equally automatic stimulus. The will, as it appears to me, except, of course, in los primeros movimientos, has almost dropped out of use, so that when the drama has once commenced, all the rest follows of itself. I have said that the two birds turn simultaneously. Strictly speaking, I suppose that one of them—the pursued one probably—makes the initial movement towards doing so: but so immediate is the action of the other upon it, that it often looks as though both had swung round at the same instant of time. This, surely, at a distance of fifty or a hundred yards, is, in itself, a very remarkable thing, though, as far as I can make out, these curious chases have not attracted much attention. If we wish to see their real origin, we must watch the fighting of other species. In all, or nearly all, birds, there is a mixture of pugnacity and timidity. The former urges them to rush upon the foe, the latter to turn tail and retreat, whenever they are, themselves, rushed upon. Thus, in most combats, there is a good deal of alternate advancing and retreating, but this is no more than what one might expect, and has a quite natural appearance. In various species, however, the tendency is exaggerated in a greater or less degree, until, in the partridge, we find it developed to a quite extraordinary extent; whilst there is something—a sort of clockwork appearance in the bird’s actions, due, I suppose, to the wonderful simultaneousness with which they turn, and the length of time for which they keep at just the same distance from one another, with a wide gap between them—which strikes one as very peculiar.

Do we not see in these varying degrees of one and the same thing, commencing with what is scarce noticeable, and ending in something extremely pronounced, the passage, through habit and repetition, of a rational action into a formal one? Do we not, in fact, see one kind of antic, with the cause of it? A natural tendency has led to a certain act being so frequently performed that it has become, at last, a sort of set figure that can no longer be shaken off. As, in the case of the partridge, this figure is gone through over and over again, sometimes for an hour or more together, I believe that it will, some day, either quite take the place of fighting, with this species, or become a thing distinct and apart from it; so that its original meaning being no longer recognisable, it will be alluded to as “one of those odd and inexplicable impulses which seem, sometimes, to possess birds,” &c. &c.—so difficult to explain, in fact, that some naturalists would prefer not to try to. For myself, I like trying, and I see, in the curiously set and formal-looking combats of many birds, a possible origin of some of those so-called dances or antics which do not seem to bear any special relation to the attracting or charming of the one sex by the other. The whole thing, I believe, is this. Anything constantly gone through, in a particular manner, becomes a routine, and a routine becomes, in time, automatical, the more so, probably, as we descend lower in the scale of life. Whilst the actions get more and more fixed, the clear purpose that originally dictated them, becomes, first, subordinated, then obscured, finally forgotten, and intelligence has lapsed. We have, then, an antic, but when this has come about, change is likely to begin. For the actions being not, now, of any special use, there will be nothing to keep them fixed, and as muscular activity goes hand in hand with mental excitement, such excitement will, probably, give rise to other actions, which, having no definite object, and being of an energetic character, must often seem grotesque. Movements, indeed, appear odd in proportion as we can see no meaning in them. There being, now, such antics, accompanied with excitement, it is probable that excitement of any kind will tend to produce them, and, the strongest kind of excitement being the sexual one, they are likely to become a feature of the season of love. Moreover, the most vigorous birds will be the best performers in this kind, and if these be the males, then, whether they win the females by their vigour, or whether the females choose them for the result of it—their antics namely—in either case these will increase. For my part, I believe that the one sex will, generally, take an interest in what the other does, which would lead to more and more emulation, and more and more choice. Thus, however any antic may have originated, it seems to me very probable that it will, ultimately, become a sexual one, and it will then often be indistinguishable from such as have been entirely sexual in their origin. Examples of the latter would be, in my view, those frenzied motions, springing from the violence of the sexual passion, which, by their becoming pleasing to the one sex, when indulged in by the other, have been moulded, by this influence, into a conscious display. Inasmuch, however, as, upon my supposition, almost any action can become an antic, and as a long time may then elapse before it is employed sexually, it is natural that we should find, amongst birds, a number of antics which are not sexual ones, and which neither add to, nor detract from, the evidence for or against sexual selection.

It may be said that the snipes which I saw fighting were only one pair. Still they were a pair of snipes, and as representative, I suppose, as any other pair of the same bird. No doubt there would be degrees of efficiency and formality, but this would not affect the general argument. Wherever, in nature, any process is going on, some of the individuals of those species affected by it will be more affected than others.