l our human motives and
attributes, and often to credit them with plans and devices that imply
reason and a fair amount of mechanical knowledge. An illustration of
this is the account of the nest of a pair of orioles, as described in
the "North American Review" for May, 1903, by a writer of popular
nature books. These orioles built a nest so extraordinary that it can
be accounted for only on the theory that there _is_ a school of the
woods, and that these two birds had been pupils there and had taken an
advanced course in Strings. Among other things impossible for birds to
do, these orioles tied a knot in the end of a string to prevent its
fraying in the wind! If the whole idea were not too preposterous for
even a half-witted child to believe, one might ask, What in the name
of anything and everything but the "Modern School of Nature Study" do
orioles know about strings fraying in the wind and the use of knots to
prevent it? They have never had occasion to know; they have had no
experience with strings that hang loose and unravel in the wind. They
often use strings, to be sure, in building their nests, but they use
them in a sort of haphazard way, weaving them awkwardly into the
structure, and leaving no loose ends that would suffer by fraying in
the wind. Sometimes they use strings in attaching the nest to the
limb, but they never knot or tie them; they simply wind them round and
round as a child might. It is possible that a bird might be taught to
tie a knot with its foot and beak, though I should have to see it done
to be convinced. But the orioles in question not only tied knots; they
tied them with a "reversed double hitch, the kind that a man uses in
cinching his saddle"! More wonderful still, not finding in a New
England elm-embowered town a suitable branch from which to suspend
their nest, the birds went down upon the ground and tied three twigs
together in the form of "a perfectly measured triangle" (no doubt
working from a plan drawn to a scale). They attached to the three
sides of this framework four strings of equal length (eight or ten
inches), all carefully doubled, tied them to a heavier string, carried
the whole ingenious contrivance to a tree, and tied it fast to a limb
in precisely the way you or I would have done it! From this framework
they suspended their nest, the whole structure being about two feet
long, and having the effect of a small hanging basket. Still more
astonishing, when the genuineness