I will conclude my description of the natural history of these
islands by giving an account of the extreme tameness of the birds.
This disposition is common to all the terrestrial species; namely,
to the mocking-thrushes, the finches, wrens, tyrant-flycatchers,
the dove, and carrion-buzzard. All of them often approached
sufficiently near to be killed with a switch, and sometimes, as I
myself tried, with a cap or hat. A gun is here almost superfluous;
for with the muzzle I pushed a hawk off the branch of a tree. One
day, whilst lying down, a mocking-thrush alighted on the edge of a
pitcher, made of the shell of a tortoise, which I held in my hand,
and began very quietly to sip the water; it allowed me to lift it
from the ground whilst seated on the vessel: I often tried, and
very nearly succeeded, in catching these birds by their legs.
Formerly the birds appear to have been even tamer than at present.
Cowley (in the year 1684) says that the "Turtledoves were so tame,
that they would often alight on our hats and arms, so as that we
could take them alive: they not fearing man, until such time as
some of our company did fire at them, whereby they were rendered
more shy." Dampier also, in the same year, says that a man in a
morning's walk might kill six or seven dozen of these doves. At
present, although certainly very tame, they do not alight on
people's arms, nor do they suffer themselves to be killed in such
large numbers. It is surprising that they have not become wilder;
for these islands during the last hundred and fifty years have been
frequently visited by bucaniers and whalers; and the sailors,
wandering through the wood in search of tortoises, always take
cruel delight in knocking down the little birds.
These birds, although now still more persecuted, do not readily
become wild: in Charles Island, which had then been colonised about
six years, I saw a boy sitting by a well with a switch in his hand,
with which he killed the doves and finches as they came to drink.
He had already procured a little heap of them for his dinner, and
he said that he had constantly been in the habit of waiting by this
well for the same purpose. It would appear that the birds of this
archipelago, not having as yet learnt that man is a more dangerous
animal than the tortoise or the Amblyrhynchus, disregard him, in
the same manner as in England shy birds, such as magpies, disregard
the cows and horses grazing in our fields.
The Falkland Islands offer a second instance of birds with a
similar disposition. The extraordinary tameness of the little
Opetiorhynchus has been remarked by Pernety, Lesson, and other
voyagers. It is not, however, peculiar to that bird: the Polyborus,
snipe, upland and lowland goose, thrush, bunting, and even some
true hawks, are all more or less tame. As the birds are so tame
there, where foxes, hawks, and owls occur, we may infer that the
absence of all rapacious animals at the Galapagos is not the cause
of their tameness here. The upland geese at the Falklands show, by
the precaution they take in building on the islets, that they are
aware of their danger from the foxes; but they are not by this
rendered wild towards man. This tameness of the birds, especially
of the waterfowl, is strongly contrasted with the habits of the
same species in Tierra del Fuego, where for ages past they have
been persecuted by the wild inhabitants. In the Falklands, the
sportsman may sometimes kill more of the upland geese in one day
than he can carry home; whereas in Tierra del Fuego it is nearly as
difficult to kill one as it is in England to shoot the common wild
goose.
In the time of Pernety (1763) all the birds there appear to have
been much tamer than at present; he states that the Opetiorhynchus
would almost perch on his finger; and that with a wand he killed
ten in half an hour. At that period the birds must have been about
as tame as they now are at the Galapagos. They appear to have
learnt caution more slowly at these latter islands than at the
Falklands, where they have had proportionate means of experience;
for besides frequent visits from vessels, those islands have been
at intervals colonised during the entire period. Even formerly,
when all the birds were so tame, it was impossible by Pernety's
account to kill the black-necked swan--a bird of passage, which
probably brought with it the wisdom learnt in foreign countries.
I may add that, according to Du Bois, all the birds at Bourbon in
1571-72, with the exception of the flamingoes and geese, were so
extremely tame, that they could be caught by the hand, or killed in
any number with a stick. Again, at Tristan d'Acunha in the
Atlantic, Carmichael states that the only two land-birds, a thrush
and a bunting, were "so tame as to suffer themselves to be caught
with a hand-net." (17/6. "Linnean Transactions" volume 12 page 496.
The most anomalous fact on this subject which I have met with is
the wildness of the small birds in the Arctic parts of North
America (as described by Richardson "Fauna Bor." volume 2 page
332), where they are said never to be persecuted. This case is the
more strange, because it is asserted that some of the same species
in their winter-quarters in the United States are tame. There is
much, as Dr. Richardson well remarks, utterly inexplicable
connected with the different degrees of shyness and care with which
birds conceal their nests. How strange it is that the English
wood-pigeon, generally so wild a bird, should very frequently rear
its young in shrubberies close to houses!) From these several facts
we may, I think, conclude, first, that the wildness of birds with
regard to man is a particular instinct directed against HIM, and
not dependent upon any general degree of caution arising from other
sources of danger; secondly, that it is not acquired by individual
birds in a short time, even when much persecuted; but that in the
course of successive generations it becomes hereditary. With
domesticated animals we are accustomed to see new mental habits or
instincts acquired and rendered hereditary; but with animals in a
state of nature it must always be most difficult to discover
instances of acquired hereditary knowledge. In regard to the
wildness of birds towards man, there is no way of accounting for
it, except as an inherited habit: comparatively few young birds, in
any one year, have been injured by man in England, yet almost all,
even nestlings, are afraid of him; many individuals, on the other
hand, both at the Galapagos and at the Falklands, have been pursued
and injured by man, but yet have not learned a salutary dread of
him. We may infer from these facts, what havoc the introduction of
any new beast of prey must cause in a country, before the instincts
of the indigenous inhabitants have become adapted to the stranger's
craft or power.