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

At the same time, let us all beware of seeing too much, and chary of recording scientific hallucinations. It is better to see nothing than to see many things that are not true! In ten octavo pages that particular rock can split wide open the best reputation ever grown. Bird Architecture. The wisdom of birds in the selection of nesting sites, the designing of the best nest for their respective wants, and finally the construction of them, indicate instinct, reasoning power and mechanical skill of a high order. The range from the wonderful woven homes of the weaver bird and the Baltimore oriole down to the bare and nestless incubating spot of the penguin is so great that nothing less than a volume can furnish space in which to set it forth. But let us at least take a brief glance at a wide range of home-building activities by birds. The orioles, caciques and weavers weave wonderful homes of fibrous material, often in populous communities. The bower birds erect remarkable bowers, as playhouses. The brush turkey scratches together a huge mound of sticks and leaves, four feet by ten or twelve wide at the base. The vireo and many others turn out beautiful cup-like nests. The hummingbird builds with the solidity and tenacity of the wasp. The swallow is a wonderful modeler with mud. The guacharo builds a solid nest like a cheese with a concave top. The auklet, the puffin and the kingfishers burrow into the friendly and solid earth. The eider duck plucks from its own breast the softest, of feather linings for its nest.