SALUTARY JUSTICE

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3182, 26 May 1932, Page 6

SALUTARY JUSTICE

AMONG BIRDS. In "Cage Birds" for 23rd January, says "Nature,"' R. E. D. Barring-ion records a curious case in which a female siskin, which has been persistently bullying a male before a blue-'fronted Amazon parrot, was, after careful inspection, pulled through the bars of the cage and killed by the latter after it had been released from its own. This disposition to interfere in the quarrels even of alien species in what we should call the case of justice appears to be widely spread in birds, judging from occasional instances which the writer has witnessed. A cariama thus interfered between two greater blackbacked gulls, striking one which had injured and was pursuing the other; a female ruddy sheldrake forced a male common sheldrake to drop a mallard duckling which he was holding up by the tail; a piping crowshrike habitually attacked a magpie when it was bullying some other bird of the crow tribe, jay or jackdaw, and ultimately, it was said, killed it; these were captive birds, but Indian house crows at large attacked a kite which was plucking alive a dabchick, not by the usual stealthy manoeuvres with which they often try to rob this bird of its food, but by a fierce direct assault, which seemed to suggest a sympathy one would certainly not have expected in crows. He has seen no similar instances in mammals, but Romanes, in "Animal Intelligence," records what seems like one, when a very sensatiye terrier would seize his sleeve if, when driving, he touched the horse with the whip, in evident deprecation.