I quote the following exhibition of intelligence in an eagle from Menault:—
The following account of the patience with which a golden eagle submitted to surgical treatment, and the care which it showed in the gradual use of the healing limb, must suggest the idea that something very near to prudence and reason existed in the bird. This eagle was caught in a fox-trap set in the forest of Fontainebleau, and its claw had been terribly torn. An operation was performed on the limb by the conservators of the Zoological Gardens at Paris, which the noble bird bore with a rational patience. Though his head was left loose, he made no attempts to interfere with the agonising extraction of the splinters, or to disturb the arrangements of the annoying bandages. He seemed really to understand the nature of the services rendered, and that they were for his good.[183]
Speaking of the Urubu vultures, Mr. Bates says:—
They assemble in great numbers in the villages about the end of the wet season, and are then ravenous with hunger. My cook could not leave the open kitchen at the back of the house for a moment whilst the dinner was cooking, on account of their thievish propensities. Some of them were always loitering about, watching their opportunity, and the instant the kitchen was left unguarded, the bold marauders marched in and lifted the lids of the saucepans with their beaks to rob them of their contents. The boys of the village lie in wait, and shoot them with bow and arrow; and vultures have consequently acquired such a dread of these weapons, that they may be often kept off by hanging a bow from the rafters of the kitchen.[184]
Mrs. Lee, in her 'Anecdotes', says that one day her gardener was struck by the strange conduct of a robin, which the man had often fed. The bird fluttered about him in so strange a manner—now coming close, then hurrying away, always in the same direction—that the gardener followed its retreating movements. The robin stopped near a flower-pot, and fluttered over it in great agitation. It was soon found that a nest had been formed in the pot, and contained several young. Close by was a snake, intent, doubtless, upon making a meal of the brood.
The following appeared in the 'Gardener's Chronicle' for Aug. 3, 1878, under the initials 'T. G.' I wrote to the editor requesting him to supply me with the name of his correspondent, and also to state whether he knew him to be a trustworthy man. In reply the editor said that he knew his correspondent to be trustworthy, and that his name is Thomas Guring:—
About thirty years ago the small market town in which I reside was skirted by an open common, upon which a number of geese were kept by cottagers. The number of the birds was very great. . . . . Our corn market at that time was held in the street in front of the principal inn, and on the market day a good deal of corn was scattered from sample bags by millers. Somehow the geese found out about the spilling of corn, and they appear to have held a consultation upon the subject. . . . . From this time they never missed their opportunity, and the entry of the geese was always looked for and invariably took place. On the morning after the market, early, and always on the proper morning, fortnightly, in they came cackling and gobbling in merry mood, and they never came on the wrong day. The corn, of course, was the attraction, but in what manner did they mark the time? One might have supposed that their perceptions were awakened on the market day by the smell of corn, or perhaps by the noise of the market traffic; but my story is not yet finished, and its sequel is against this view. It happened one year that a day of national humiliation was kept, and the day appointed was that on which our market should have been held. The market was postponed, and the geese for once were baffled. There was no corn to tickle their olfactory organs from afar, no traffic to appeal to their sense of hearing. I think our little town was as still as it usually is on Sundays. . . . . The geese should have stopped away; but they knew their day, and came as usual. . . . . I do not pretend to remember under what precise circumstances the habit of coming into the street was acquired. It may have been formed by degrees, and continued from year to year; but how the old birds, who must have led the way, marked the time so as to come in regularly and fortnightly, on a particular day of the week, I am at a loss to conceive.
Livingstone's 'Expedition to the Zambesi, 1865,' p. 209, gives a conclusive account of the bird called the honey-guide, which leads persons to bees' nests. 'They are quite as anxious to lure the stranger to the bees' hive as other birds are to draw him away from their own nests.' The object of the bird is to obtain the pupæ of the bees which are laid bare by the ravaging of the nest. The habits of this bird have long been known and described in books on popular natural history; but it is well that the facts have been observed by so trustworthy a man as Livingstone. He adds, 'How is it that members of this family have learned that all men, white and black, are fond of honey? 'We can only answer, by intelligent observation in the first instance, passing into individual and hereditary habit, and so eventually into a fixed instinct.
Brehm relates an instance of cautious sagacity in a pewit. He had placed some horsehair snares over its nest, but the bird seeing them, pushed them aside with her bill. Next day he set them thickly round the nest; but now the bird, instead of running as usual to the nest along the ground, alighted directly upon it. This shows a considerable appreciation of mechanical appliances, as does also the following.
Mrs. G. M. E. Campbell writes to me:—