Our Bird Comrades

by Leander S. Keyser

The same was true in regard to flight. No feathered adult was present to tutor them in the art of using their wings, yet they soon acquired that power of their own accord. It was inborn—the gift of flight. True, they were awkward at first, and gained skill only by degrees, but the original impulse was in their constitution. It is no doubt true that parent birds in the outdoors do give their young lessons in flight, but if the bantlings were left to themselves, they would acquire that art through their original endowment, although more slowly and with many more hard knocks.

As every one knows, juvenile birds at first open their mouths for their food. Proof may not be at hand for the opinion, but I am disposed to believe that they never need to be told by their parents to do that; their instincts prompt them. It must be so, I think, for to suppose that the bird baby only a day or two from the shell could understand a parental command to open its mouth would be to presume that it has the instinct to grasp the meaning of such a behest, and that is more difficult to believe than that Nature simply impels it to take its food by opening its mandibles.

Now, when the young birds are taken from the nest and reared by hand, they insist for a long time on being fed in the juvenile manner. However, by and by they begin of their own volition to pick up food after the manner of the adults. At first they are very clumsy about it, but they persevere until they acquire skill, and presently they refuse entirely to open their mandibles for food. Here again Nature is their sole guide. Without human or avian suggestion they also learn to drink in the well-known bird fashion; also to bathe, chirp, frolic, and do many other things. Who has ever seen a pet bird in drinking try to lap like a dog, or take in long draughts like a cow or a horse? No; Nature made them birds, and birds they will be. It is noticeable, too, that when birds begin to peck, or bathe, or seek a perch, they do not usually act as if they were deliberately planning to do so, nor as if they were carrying on some process of thought leading to choice, but rather as if they were impelled by Nature to do so.

The chirping of birds is mostly, if not wholly, a matter of inheritance. For instance, my little wood thrushes, as soon as they reached a sufficient age, called just like their relatives of the sylvan solitudes; my brown thrashers uttered the labial chirp of the species; my red-winged blackbird exclaimed "Chack! chack!" after the manner of his kind; my bluebirds expressed their feelings in the sad little purr of Sialia sialis; my flickers did not borrow the calls of the red-heads, but each clung to its own language; my catbirds mewed like poor pussy in trouble; and so on through the whole list. True, these pets may have heard their parents' calls before they were taken from the nest, but it is not at all likely that they would have remembered them, for at first they only "cheeped" after the manner of most bantlings, and only a good while afterward did they fall to using the adult chirp. Besides, while still in the nest, they must have heard many other bird calls; why did they not acquire them? Heredity has laid a strong hand upon birds, and has drawn sharp dividing lines among the various species.

Instinct also plays a large part in moving the bird to sing and to render the peculiar arias of its kind. For instance, a pet wood thrush of mine, secured at an early age and kept far away from all his kith of the wildwood, became a fine musician. And what do you suppose was the tune he executed? It was the sweet, dreamy, somewhat labored song of the wood thrush in his native wilds. He never sang any other tune. I think he sang it better than any wild thrush I have ever heard. It was louder, clearer, more full-toned, but the quality of voice and the technique were precisely the same. Who was his teacher? No one but Nature, heredity, instinct, whatever you choose to call it. There was no wild thrush within a half mile of his cage.

The case of a pet thrasher was almost as striking. It is true, he may have heard several of his kin singing about the premises during the first spring of his captivity, but it is not probable that he learned their melodies so early in life. As the next spring approached, he began to sing the very medleys that the wild thrashers sing with so much earnestness and skill, and this was long before any thrashers had come back from the South.

I must now describe several cases in which inherited instinct did not prove so true a teacher. A young robin was once given me by a friend, and was kept by myself and others until the following summer. Strange as it may seem, he never acquired the well-known robin carol. Sometimes there were vague hints of it in his vocal performances, but for the most part he whistled strains in a loud, shrill tone that no wild robin ever dreamed of inflicting on the world. They were more like crude human efforts at whistling than anything else. Indeed, I think they were picked up from the whistling he heard about the house. Some of his strains were very sweet, and all of them were wonderful for a bird. A friend played "Yankee Doodle" on a cornet, and Master 'Rastus—for that was his name—gave a very fair and funny imitation of part of the air. There were many robins caroling in the trees about the premises, and 'Rastus was often left out of doors among them, but he never acquired the red-breast minstrelsy.

A similar instance was that of a pet red-winged blackbird, which, instead of whistling the labored "Grook-o-lee" of his species, learned to mimic all kinds of sounds in and out of the house, among them the crowing of the cocks of the barnyard. These two instances would indicate that some birds must at least be associated with their kin in order to learn the songs of their species.