May 17—I am often asked the question, "do you really think that birds are clever, or do merely impute some form of cleverness to thei s because we do not understand them?" I this a most difficult question to answer. in any short form. I would say, for that a bird's mentality (from the human standpoint) might be taken as that of a child of six or seven, BUT....then all th and explanations which follow th big word "but" become so diverse and complicate ed that they would require a whole book rather than a short paragraph. A very common action to be observed among many breeding birds, ud particularly our lo s the playing of a kind of "King of tle" game Bulbul flies my apple tree, raises h wings with feathers all outspread and yells, "Chi-oe-chi-oe-chi-oe": whereupon another Bulbul fr er side of the garden flies the s beside the first bird, Is "Chi-oe-chi.o, ete." in precisely the same manner: wings kre waved until one bird loses his nerve and flies away....so the other bird pretends to give chase for a moment, then, r turning to the perch. jumps into the air show ing his battle cry for all arid like a sma boy scream "I'm King of the Castle." Tha! childish from the human standpoint, but, it may be a very important matter in the life of a bird. Another example may be helpful. 1 watched an Oriole the other day going through the motions of ingratiating himself with his ladylove: he began to feed her but, not finding any food handy, he just fed her with nothing, and she seemed equally pleašed: perhaps the birds find pleasure in this form of "billing" (some birds habitually cross bills a greeting)—or perhaps it was merely an e: ample of bird mentality insisting on an habitual action, however inappropriate. As one observer has said, "If you had the mind of a bird you would probably recite 'The Boy stood on the Burning Deck' at a smoking cancer would be equally likely to do so of an air-raid or an earthquake."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.