Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1896 — Birds of III Nature. [ARTICLE]

Birds of III Nature.

Among those birds which stay at home, especially the most domesticated, there is often an exhibition of unkindness seemingly unaccountable, says a writer in the Cornhill Magazine. The graceful swan, e. g., is one of the most ungracious in its ways. Not only (in the breeding season) does a male bird resent the Intrusion of a strange gentleman, but it will spend the day in driving off from its domain any unlucky geese, which might be plainly assumed to have no designs upon its domestic arrangements, and have, indeed, no desire beyond that for a comfortable wash and swim. It will also pursue even the most innocent of newborn ducklings while they unwittingly rejoice in an early taste of their common element. When an only child has passed out of the cygnet stage of life and grown to full physical, if not mental, maturity, father and mother swans have been known to fall upon and deliberately beat it to death with wing and beak. The gratified parents swam gracefully about the mere in which they lived, while the great white corpse of their son lay, battered and dead, ui>on the shore. The following year’ after’ another had been born to them, and in infancy carried upon his mother’s back, they began to treat him so roughly that, not being pinioned like them, he wisely flew away, find wo saw him no more. Curiously enough, geese which have experienced rudeness from swans in the lusty spring have been known to retaliate in the calmer autumn, when the fierceness of their enemy had become mitigated. I have seen a gander leap upon the back of a once arrogant swan and pound away at it in the full enjoyment of gratified revenge.