File:Campfires on desert and lava (1908) (14586593179).jpg

Identifier: campfiresondeser00horn (find matches)
Title: Campfires on desert and lava
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Hornaday, William T. (William Temple), 1854-1937
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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it along ourroute all the way from Tucson to the lava-fields, and onecovey was seen upon the lava. On leaving Tucson over the westward trail, the nestsof the Cactus Wren* attract immediate attention. I haveit down in my notes of November 2nd, that we saw abouttwenty-five nests in the tree-choya cactus, but none inbushes. Now perhaps this was a string of coincidences.Perhaps the Cactus Wren cannot and does not reasonfrom premise hawk to cactus-spine conclusion; but thereare men in Arizona and in New York also who believethat it does, and can show good cause for doing so. Every reasoning being knows full well that it is farmore difficult, and also more disagreeable, to build a nestin the geographical centre of a tree choya, encounteringthe while about two thousand wicked spines, than it wouldbe to build in a mesquite or a palo verde. Anyone whowill deny this is simply hopeless. This being true, it isimpossible to imagine a bird building in the most difficult *Heleodytes brunneicapillus.
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NOVEMBER BIRD LIFE 321 and painful place without a reason for doing so, and muchmore of a reason than the mechanical example of anancestor. Birds are not dull in adapting themselves tonew conditions! The robins of Gardiners Island, NewYork, very quickly learned that the absence of cats andbad boys rendered it perfectly safe to build within twofeet of the ground; and most certainly there was in thatneither instinct nor example, but precisely the reverse!It was reason. They formulated a theory, tried it andfound that it was correct. In many cases we were puzzled to understand how itis possible for a Cactus Wren—which is fully three timesthe size of an ordinary house-wren—to penetrate to theinterior of a tree choya, and build an elaborate nest in aspace that seems hopelessly small. But the little brain ofthat small feathered creature contains at least one concreteidea—the survival of the fittest; and to him there is noneso fit as himself. The unwise birds who builded in thebushes h

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