. The home life of wild birds; a new method of the study and photography of birds . Fig. 105. Serving a black cricket to a fledgling who has climbed tothe rim of the nest and is struggling to maintain his position. I IO Wild Birds. tion of the hunger of the moment, and another illustration of the economy which birds dis-play in all such matters. While the removal of the excreta is an instinctive act, the use of it as food is pro-bably an acquired habit, the strength of which depends on the force of circumstances,and may be limited in some cases to one sex CHAPTER XII. THE FORCE OF HABI
. The home life of wild birds; a new method of the study and photography of birds . Fig. 105. Serving a black cricket to a fledgling who has climbed tothe rim of the nest and is struggling to maintain his position. I IO Wild Birds. tion of the hunger of the moment, and another illustration of the economy which birds dis-play in all such matters. While the removal of the excreta is an instinctive act, the use of it as food is pro-bably an acquired habit, the strength of which depends on the force of circumstances,and may be limited in some cases to one sex CHAPTER XII. THE FORCE OF HABIT. UNDER some conditions habits are formed with surprising quickness. The habitma}- be of trifling significance and have only a brief reign, but no habits areabsolutely rigid, and the genesis of all is probably the same,—pleasurable conse-quences following repeated actions which may be forced or accidental. The result is inall cases similar,—a mental association of certain things with certain actions. While watching hour bv hour the Robins described in Chapter IV, and recordingtheir visits to their young, I began to notice on the third day that the male usuallyapproached on the right side of the nest, that is on the observers right as he stood facingit, while the female frequently came to the back or on the left. From that time I recordedthe manner of each approach, and found that the male invariably came to the right side,and hopped down the limb to his nest. In the table given below in which the visits of both birds are recorded for two con-secutive
Size: 1820px × 1373px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1901
