Nor were they long satisfied with a low
perch, but instinctively mounted to the highest one they could find.

The same was true in regard to flight. No feathered adult was present
to tutor them in the art of using their wings, yet they soon acquired
that power of their own accord. It was inborn--the gift of flight.
True, they were awkward at first, and gained skill only by degrees, but
the original impulse was in their constitution. It is no doubt true
that parent birds in the outdoors do give their young lessons in
flight, but if the bantlings were left to themselves, they would
acquire that art through their original endowment, although more slowly
and with many more hard knocks.

As every one knows, juvenile birds at first open their mouths for their
food. Proof may not be at hand for the opinion, but I am disposed to
believe that they never need to be told by their parents to do that;
their instincts prompt them. It must be so, I think, for to suppose
that the bird baby only a day or two from the shell could understand a
parental command to open its mouth would be to presume that it has the
instinct to grasp the meaning of such a behest, and that is more
difficult to believe than that Nature simply impels it to take its food
by opening its mandibles.

Now, when the young birds are taken from the nest and reared by hand,
they insist for a long time on being fed in the juvenile manner.
However, by and by they begin of their own volition to pick up food
after the manner of the adults. At first they are very clumsy about
it, but they persevere until they acquire skill, and presently they
refuse entirely to open their mandibles for food. Here again Nature is
their sole guide. Without human or avian suggestion they also learn to
drink in the well-known bird fashion; also to bathe, chirp, frolic, and
do many other things. Who has ever seen a pet bird in drinking try to
lap like a dog, or take in long draughts like a cow or a horse? No;
Nature made them birds, and birds they will be. It is noticeable, too,
that when birds begin to peck, or bathe, or seek a perch, they do not
usually act as if they were deliberately planning to do so, nor as if
they were carrying on some process of thought leading to choice, but
rather as if they were impelled by Nature to do so.

The chirping of birds is mostly, if not wholly, a matter of
inheritance. For instance, my little wood thrushes, as soon as they
reached a sufficien