INDIVIDUALITY IN BIRDS.
Most naturalists will concur as to the Hungarian's verdict; but recent inquiry adds a point. Birds, like vermin, especially foxes, are individualists, and odd members of the community will, by a sort of accident, develop habits not common to the community. I have seen proof, for example, that occasional kestrels (a most useful bird) will imitate the sparrow hawk. Individual foxes, though not the generality, will become habitual, persistent bird's-nesters like the degenerate rooks. I have known two dogs—one a spaniel, the other aRuàin retriever—that adopted bird's-nesting as their favourite hobby. The retriever would take out the nests whole, and deal with them so neatly that he did not break an egg, till he decided to suck it at his leisure. One particular example induces me to suspect—in spite of the rashness of such an inference—that foxes wounded by a trap or otherwise are apt to change their habits and give up the hunting of rats or rabbits—their proper food—ftir nestlings and such easier prey. Last year I watched for an hour the gulls sucking the eggs of the unhappy guile- mots; but I doubt whether any land birds—even jays or magpies—are professional thieves on the scale of skuas or blackbacked or even in some places herring gulls.
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