BIRDS AND FEAR OF MAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18444, 4 January 1922, Page 2

BIRDS AND FEAR OF MAN

In “ Nature Notes ” in the Scotsman, a correspondent gives the following scrap of information, which will appeal to all lovers of.wild birds; — _ _ . In a , reoent interesting letter, 'Colonel How'ard-Bury. leader of tho Mount Everest expedition, tells how, at a height of 18,000 ft, the birds showed no fear of man.' They at© food from the traveller’s hands and sat upon their shoulders. An old seafaring man has also been 'telling us that he has known a bird to alight ,on tho deck of a ship thousands of mites from land, and allow, the sailors to feed it. Weakness and hunger seemed to render it triumphant over the fear of man. A still stranger story of tho ability of a bird to overcome its usual fear was told me recently by a golfer. _ He was playing one day When a small bird came and lighted on his shoulder, to his great astonishment. More than once he tried to shoo it away, but it invariably returned. Puzzled by such unusual behaviour, and seeking- for an explanation, he chanced to look up. There overhead he saw a hawk hovering. The little bird, terrified at the sight ol its winged enemy, had flown for protection to a man. So timid, os a rule, are nearly all our wild birds, that these recorded instances of a contrary kind of behaviour are all the more interesting and thought-provoking. They suggest possibilities as to what may happen in the future os love and kindness enter more and more into their kingdom. The robin is probably the tamest of our resident wild birds. He will not hesitate with one he knows to step in through an open window and feed out of one’s hand. But, as a rule; even the robin seems to bo' filled with apprehension lest someone lift and throw a stone at him or harry his nest. Seagulls are _ easily soared. When one enters their domain among the cliffs ope bird calls 'warningly to another till the whole colony is made aware of the presence of an intruder. Nevertheless, I know a man who keeps a tame seagull. It will not, perhaps, allow you to lift it, but it will draw near quite confidently and take the fobd which you have put down for it at your feet. One cannot help asking, in view of. the Mount Everest experience, whether the natural attitude of birds to man is a friendly one, and whether the instinctive timiditv and dread manifesto! by most of our wild birds is not a hereditary matter, the result of ages of persecution.