[Illustration]
Being unable to ask birds questions that will receive answers, we
have to judge their motives from appearances. And from the way some
birds act curiosity seems a strong motivation at times. They show a
disposition to inquire into things, especially strange things.
Young blue jays that I've raised and studied are among the most prying,
investigating, inquisitive birds I've known. When well fed they devoted
much time to examining things. Humans, of course, would examine objects
by picking them up in their hands, looking at and feeling them, perhaps
tasting them. The jays, with more limited equipment, would examine them
with bill and eye. When the jays were very young their toes interested
them. They pecked at and twisted their own and their neighbor's toes.
Pencils and crayons on my desk appeared to interest them particularly.
These they were continually pulling about and pecking at. They went
about picking at lines on paper, knotholes in the walls of their
cage, the red letters printed on a bottle label, and the buttons on
our clothes. Cigarettes they liked to investigate by pulling them to
pieces. It looked as if the jays were interested in finding out about
the things around them by touch and taste as much as they could.
LURED INTO DANGER Compared with jays, ducks seem rather stolid
creatures, but they have curiosity too. This was well known to the
old-time duck hunters who capitalized on it in duck shooting. The
technique is known as "tolling" and I've used two variations of it in
museum collecting.
Once on a little mountain lake in New Guinea I found a pair of ducks of
a rare species I especially needed for our collection. I stalked them
to the farthest bit of cover I could reach, a tussock of grass on the
lake margin, behind which I lay concealed. But the ducks were still too
far away for me to reach, and their feeding did not seem to be drawing
them nearer. I remembered the gunners' trick of tolling, and tried it.
I took out my white handkerchief, held it above the tussock of grass
while I kept well hidden, and waved the handkerchief back and forth.
The response was surprisingly prompt and gratifying. The two ducks
turned at once and swam right in to me so that I secured them without
any trouble.
Once on a lake in central New York State there was a flock of scaup
ducks swimming well offshore. It looked as if they never would come in
near the bank. Quite by accident a setter dog that accompanied us began
to cavort along the beach. Again the ducks turned and the whole flock
came swimming in. Only then did I remember that among old-time gunners
there was the practice of using a dog thus, a dog that was even trained
for the purpose, to jump high and run about very conspicuously while
the ducks were far out, and as the ducks came swimming in, to keep
lower and frisk about partly concealed so that the ducks would have to
come close to satisfy their curiosity.