The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

We understand well enough the foundation principles of mammalian and avian life, and existence under adverse circumstances. The mammal is tied to his environment. He cannot go far from the circumpolar regions of his home. A bear chained to a stake is emblematic of the universal handicap on mammalian life. Survive or perish, the average land-going quadruped must stay put, and make the best of the home in which he is born. If he attempts to migrate fast and far, he is reasonably certain to get into grave danger, and lose his life. The bird, however, is a free moral agent. If the purple grackle does not like the sunflower seeds in my garden, lo! he is up and away across the Sound to Oyster Bay, Long Island, where his luck may be better. Failing there, he gives himself a transfer to Wilmington, or Richmond, via his own Atlantic coast line. The wonderful migratory instincts of birds have been developed and intensified through countless generations by the imperative need for instinctive guidance, and the comparatively small temptation to inductive reasoning based on known facts. Evidently the bird is emboldened to migrate by the comfortable belief that somewhere the world contains food and warmth to its liking, and that if it flies fast enough and far enough it will find it. As a weather prophet, the prescience of the bird is strictly limited. The warm spells of late February deceive the birds just as they do the flowers of the peach tree and the apple. Often the bluebirds and robins migrate northward too early, encounter blizzards, and perish in large numbers from snow, sleet, cold and hunger.