Individual Tastes A nice point in the psychology of animals
has been brought out in the campaign for the reduction of the tale of rats and mice by the multiplication of cats. If a cat takes to ratting and mousing it rarely attacks birds. Some cats, on the other hand, are bird-nesters and some even fish-poachers. Their habits in such respects are individual. There are cats and cats. Now exactly the same is true of many other animals : ratting and rabbiting foxes do not attack hen-roosts, of which the great enemy is any fox that has been wounded in any way and therefore seeks an inactive quarry. I have known two bird-nesting dogs. I believe the divergent views on the feeding habits of, say, little owls and grey squirrels are explained by the individuality of the animals. They are not all drawn to type. The moorhen, for example, is an inoffensive bird ; but there is one preserve, at any rate, where some of the tribe have adopted the habit of pecking holes in ducks' eggs! An occasional rook may be a persistent egg- stealer, and an occasional tit a destroyer of bees.; but we must not on that account destroy the species.
W. BEACH THOMAS.
Previous page
