I used to have no difficulty during the first days in stealing up to the water-birds so as to get within shooting range. In an incredibly short time, however, they became shy, and then they were by no means inferior to their European relations in prudence and caution."[1] Sir Joseph Banks, when in New South Wales with Capt. Cook, found most of the birds "extremely shy, so that it was with difficulty that we shot any of them."[2] The few travellers who have had the great good fortune to visit a little known and unfrequented island have told us what small fear other animals have for their colleague Man, till they have experienced his destructive propensities, and then how quickly reserve, shyness, caution, and fear rapidly become dominant factors in a hitherto peaceful existence.
Of course there are exceptions to this rule, especially among birds. According to Mr. Macpherson, the tameness of the Ortolan Bunting as observed by him in Spain "is almost ludicrous. So little do they apprehend injury, that they will allow visitors to lie on the grass while they forage round for earthworms."[3] The writer's own experience in the Transvaal is precisely similar with respect to the Pied Babbling-Thrush (Crateropus bicolor). If I lay down at the edge of bush and kept quiet, these birds would not only come close to me, but remain there. Again, Curlews and Golden Pheasants are wild in whatever part of the world they are found, even where the report of a gun has never been heard.[4] According to Dr. Leith Adams, in Canada "the Purple Swallow has now such a predilection for man's society, on account of the preponderance of insect life which invariably surrounds him wherever he goes, that he has only to construct a small cot with several chambers, and place it on a pole at the door of any solitary shanty in the wild wilderness, when year after year, with the certainty of the seasons, it will be tenanted by these birds in preference to any other situation."[5] The sound of firearms does not at first universally create terror in birds. D'Albertis relates that, when "fishing with dynamite,"
