But as soon as the young cow-birds are able to shift
for themselves, and begin to associate with their own kind, their habits
change, and they become suspicious and wild like other birds.
On this point--the later period at which the parasitical young bird
acquires fear of man--and also bearing on the whole subject under
discussion, I shall add here some observations I once made on a dove
hatched and reared by a pigeon at my home on the pampas. A very large
ombu tree grew not far from the dove-cote, and some of the pigeons used
to make their nests on the lower horizontal branches. One summer a dove
of the most common species, Zenaida maculata, in size a third less than
the domestic pigeon, chanced to drop an egg in one of these nests, and a
young dove was hatched and reared; and, in due time, when able to fly,
it was brought to the dove-cote. I watched it a great deal, and it was
evident that this foster-young, though' with the pigeons, was not nor
ever would be of them, for it could not take kiudly to their flippant
flirty ways. Whenever a male approached it, and with guttural noises and
strange gestures made a pompous declaration of amorous feelings, the
dove would strike vigorously at its undesirable lover, and drive him
off, big as he was; and, as a rule, it would sit apart, afoot or so,
from the others. The dove was also a male; but its male companions, with
instinct tainted by domestication, were ignorant alike of its sex and
different species.
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