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

The grebe thoughtfully keeps its nest above high-water mark by building on a floating island. The murre and the guillemot do their best to escape their enemies of the land by building high upon inaccessible rock ledges. The woodpecker trusts no living species save his own, and drills high up into a hollow tree-trunk for his home. The cactus wren and crissal thrasher build in the geographical centres of tree choyas, so protected by 500,000 spines that no hawk or owl can reach them. This catalogue could be extended to a great length; but why pile evidence upon evidence! It cannot be correct to assume that the nesting activities of birds are based upon instinct alone. That theory would be untenable. New conditions call for independent thought, and originality of treatment. If the ancestral plans and specifications could not be varied, then every bird would have to build a nest just "such as mother used to make," or have no brood. All bird students know full well how easily the robin, the wren, the hawk and the owl change locations and materials to meet new and strange conditions. A robin has been known to build on the running-board of a switch-engine in a freight yard, and another robin built on the frame of the iron gate of an elephant yard. A wren will build in a tin can, a piece of drain tile, a lantern, a bird house or a coat pocket, just as blithely as its grandmother built in a grape arbor over a kitchen door. All this is the hall mark of New Thought.