Intelligence in Plants and Animals / Being a New Edition of the Author's Privately Issued "Soul and Immortality."

by Thomas G. Gentry

The young are very timid creatures and keep close to their parents. Considerable solicitude is shown by the latter for their well-being. Their helpless infancy, so to speak, is watched over with all the care that a human mother bestows upon her offspring, and when their lives are endangered recourse is had to many a ruse to deceive their enemies and bring them into places of security. When severely pressed by foes, the mother, by a peculiar alarm, warns them of the state of things, and while they are scattering in different directions seeks to attract attention to herself in many a well-feigned artifice. In her anxiety for their safety, she has even been observed to seize between her two feet a youngling and fly with it away—a behavior whose purpose seemed to be the diversion of the enemy from the rest of the brood, thus giving them a chance to flee from impending peril to places of security in the surrounding verdure. After all danger has disappeared, she summons them together again by a familiar call, and doubtless relates to them the story of her adventures and the dangers from which they were saved. Worms, animalcula, ants and other soft-bodied insects, which the parents assist them in procuring from the soft earth, and from beneath the grass and dead leaves that abound in the places they frequent, constitute their food. Later on they are able to obtain their subsistence, with all the address of older birds, by thrusting their bills into the soil and in such other places as would be likely to contain the objects desired. Their tongues, covered with a viscid saliva, adhere to the food, and when drawn into the mouth carry it with them without danger of being lost. All who have made these birds a study have often discerned holes made in the soft mud by their bills. The presence of these “borings,” as they are called, is always an indication that game is not far distant, which a careful exploration of the locality soon verifies. The young, when matured, continue to occupy the same haunts with their parents, and, unless brought to an untimely death by the merciless gun of the hunter, repair to the warm, sunny, smiling South with the return of frost. In the Middle States—and the same is doubtless true of other sections of our great country—there is never more than a single brood raised, although the early breeding of the species would certainly afford time for a second hatching before the close of the season. Less pyriform are the eggs of the Woodcock than waders’ mostly are, being, in some instances, almost ovoidal. Their ground-color varies from a light clay to one of buffy-brown, and the markings occur in the form of fine spots and blotches of chocolate-brown, interspersed with others of obscure lilac, more or less thickly scattered over the surface of the egg, their size and intensity of color bearing, in general, a direct correspondence with the depth of the background. Remarkable variations of size exist throughout the species’ range, some being short and broad, while others are long and narrow. A set of three from Pennsylvania, which the writer carefully measured, showed an average measurement of 1.54 by 1.21 inches.

So familiar a bird as the Woodcock, which is sometimes termed the Bog-sucker or Wood-snipe, hardly needs description. He has a thick, heavily-set body, short and thick neck, and large head, bill and eyes, and ears beneath the visual organs. His wings are short and rounded, the first three primaries being very narrow and shorter than the fourth, and the fourth and fifth the largest. The tarsi are about one and one-fourth inches long and rather stout, the tibiæ feathered to the joints, and the toes long and slender, and without marginal membranes or basal webs. More than two and a half inches in length is the bill, straight, tapering, and stout at base, with ridge at base of maxilla high, and the upper mandible a little larger than the lower, and knobbed at the end. Three long grooves, one on ridge above, and the others on each side of maxilla, complete the structural details of the bill. The sexes are alike, the female being larger than the male. Adult specimens vary from ten to twelve inches in length, and have an expanse of wings of from fifteen to eighteen inches, and a weight ranging from four to nine ounces. The eyes are brown, legs and bill of the dried skin pale-brownish, upper parts black, gray, russet and brown, chin whitish, and rest of under parts different shades of brownish-red.

So exquisitely sensible is the extremity of the bill, as in the snipe, that these birds are enabled to collect their food by the mere touch, without using their eyes, which are set at such a distance and elevation in the back part of the head as to give them an aspect of stupidity. The eyes being situated high up and far back is a wise provision of nature, as, by this peculiarity, they escape many of their enemies, their field of vision being greatly augmented by such an arrangement. Obtaining their sustenance, as they largely do, by probing with their bills, so amply endowed with nerves, they have comparatively little use for their eyes, unless to keep watch for their numerous foes.

Though well known to the sportsman, yet by the casual observer this bird is frequently confounded with the Wilson’s snipe. But the error can readily be avoided, if it is borne in mind that the Woodcock has the entire lower parts, including the lining of wings, a reddish-brown color, while the snipe has the abdomen white, the throat and upper parts of the breast speckled, and the lining of the wings barred with white and black.

PIPING PLOVER.

Have you ever been to the sea-shore? Then, of course, you have met the Piping Plover, but, perhaps, not to know him. He is of the size of the robin, not quite so robust, but stands much taller, being mounted on rather long, stilt-like legs, which admirably fit him for the life which he is designed to fill in the world. He belongs to the family of wading birds, and seeks the principal part of his food in or by the water, which could not possibly be were his walking appendages curtailed the least bit of their fair proportions. But to be more precise in my word-picture, let me describe him to you as of a pale ashy-brown color, fading into grayish upon the under parts, and as having his head set off with some narrow black bands, that on the neck rarely, if ever, forming a perfect ring. His bill will be found to be short and stout and blunt, and there will be an appreciable lack of webbing between the middle and inner front toes.

Now that it is plain what the bird looks like, you are certainly prepared, more than ever, to take some interest in him in his brief stay by the sea. So strongly is he attached to the scenes rendered dear by past associations and memories that, from his winter home in the sunny South, and even from over the waters beyond our southern borders, he hails with delight the return of the vernal equinox, for he knows full well that it brings with it the summer’s heat and all its varied, priceless wealth of insect life.

So with the first spring signs of open weather he quits his brumal retreat, winds his way up along the trend of the Atlantic seaboard, and at last reaches in the nights of early April the sandy beaches of our Jersey coast. In flocks of a dozen individuals they run about the sand in a most lively manner, and utter all the while a variety of notes more or less pleasing, blending as they do with the deep-toned bass of the ocean. When this sound, welling up from a dozen throats, is heard in the dark it is particularly striking, as wild and weird as the whistling of a wind at sea through the rigging of a ship.

But these flocks soon disperse into pairs to breed. Slight depressions in the dry sand, and always in the midst of groups of broken colored shells, but out of the reach of the maddened waves, rather than in muddy, marshy places back of the beach-line, serve them for nests. This nesting among clustered shells seemingly points to a love for the beautiful. But may it not be that the shells but mark the various nest-positions in the unbroken waste of sand? We incline to this opinion. There is so much diversity manifested in the size of the groups and in the arrangement and coloration of the individual shells that comprise them, that no very great difficulty should be experienced by the several pairs nesting in the same locality in knowing each other’s nest.

While the birds are concerned with the cares of brood-raising, which is usually towards the close of May or the beginning of June, they confine their feeding to the damp, wet sand. Between it and the dry a clear line of separation is plainly noticeable. It is only when they are ready for the home duties that they are seen to resort to aerial navigation. Even when on the very boundary-line of the two stretches of sand, the wet and the dry, and with the nest almost in sight, they are known to assume wing, taking due care, however, to alight before they have fairly reached the spot. In flight an advantage, that of a more commanding view, is acquired, which walking does not give. But in leaving the nest for food, or for any other purpose, they, as before, walk some distance away before they venture to fly. There is a seeming purpose in so doing, the object to be gained being the deceiving of man and other enemies as to the real location of the nest.