Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1948-07-31
This and That
BIZ Charles E. Trace1DeH
"PETIJEcnA

Dear Sir:
Let me know If you will, whether birds have
any sense. have watched them for some time
and have seen enough to make me doubt.
For one thing, I see robin feeding some
sort of a big bird that is not a robin. He must
be some kind of an mpostor, but does she
know it?
"No, she keeps right on feeding the bird.
And here had been admring the way birds
can fly, having tried aviation myself once
CATER getting greeting from dear old Uncle
Sam, when suddenly plop. right into the side
Of our house flies big bird
TT was as dead as a door nail and many
times as beautiful.
"If it had any brains, with all its ability to
fly why did it have to fly into the side of the
house?
Here is another thing Some weeks ago a
Baltimore oriole built nest, took her three
days. at least, and then suddenly she aban-
doned it.
"As far as could discover, there were no
cats around no large birds, no hawks
"One day I found bird caught in piece
OF vine.
There it was upside-down and couldn't get
out when a little plain intelligence, If 1t had
any would have shown it the way to get loose.
"One flip OF my finger, and the bird was free.
Why couldn't it have done so little for itself?
T Yours truly, E. q. L."
This correspondent expects too much of birds.
They are among the oldest living things, and
have done very we'll through the centuries.
but they never had the benefit OF speech, nor of
schools, colleges, and so on.
Their knowledge is based solely on the old
world world free of automatic devices. Some
times moderns think with longing of that old
world The birds and the animals and the
fishes still live in it.
The feathered folk know nothing about
deduction.
They only know what happens to them.
Their ability to get out of involvement is
very small Because, you see, the troubles they
got into in the old days, many thousands and
even millions of years ago, were simple troubles
Simple troubles, of course can kill you just
as well and as quickly as complex ones.
There is nothing simple about ALI atom bomb
1t does neat job of mass killing. II we can
believe what we have read.
The birds find a piece of string wrapped
around the neck as complicated and as deadly
as bomb.
1t is not lack of brains. but loss in evou-
ton, which makes them incapable Of handling
matters that seem as easy as A, B, G to us.
The mother robin, imposed upon by cow
bird baby. is doing what nature tells her to do
feed the hungry little ones If a certain little
one does not seem exactly right what difference
does that make?
Birds sometimes fly into houses. and so kill
themselves-but how is the watcher to know
what hours Of hunger or lack of water or simple
fatigue caused the accident?
If the mother oriole, master builder, con-
structs her hanging nest, but decides to leave
it and try again somewhere else. who in human
form is quite smart enough to know exactly
what was in her mind?
Be sure that her mind is not In the least like
our own minds. She has different set OF
values But when we see how well the btrds.
as group, manage their own affairs we cam
not be sure that they have no brains, no sense,
as our correspondent puts it.
They are very much alive, very practical
little people Of the air, who have many fall
ures, but also many successes. In this they are
q great deal like Human people. Maybe to q
bird, our own failures look even sillier.