Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 178, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1920 — BIRDS IN COMBAT [ARTICLE]

BIRDS IN COMBAT

Feathered Creatures Sometimes , / Battle to the Death. ««itoary «e Pretty Theory, Perfect Phco Does Not Always Reifln . Within Those "Little Nests" as «un« by Post "Birds In their Uttle nests agree." wrote Doctor Watts. If the eminent preacher had chanced to witness an Incident similar to that which I saw the other day, Ays a writer In the London Daßy Hall, he would never have penned that libel. I was walking across a course when two sparrows shot past my head, chattering violently, and. coming to ground a few yards away, set to fighting so furiously that I was actually able to pick them both up In my hands. I let one go at once; the other I carried a little distance before liberating IL Will you believe it?—a moment later the two were at it again, bank and claws. Almost all birds fight furiously In the springtime. Even turtle doves, those emblems of peace, will go for one another in the mating season. The various methods of offense adopted by different birds are interest tng Sparrows use their powerful but hold one another with their dawg. Starlings fight in exactly similar fashion. Their combats are at times most desperate. A friend saw one cock starling actually kill another. 'Pigeons use their wings but rarely do one another much harm. Swans fight with their wings, and their jrtyeprtb is so great tliat their battles sometimes result fatally. 1 have, however, seen a_swan apparently endeavoring to hold the head of a rival under water, but I was not near enough to make out what happened. Some birds have spurs on their wings The spur-wlnged goose, which la a small, long-legged bird and rather resembles a duck on stilts, has extraordinary wing power. One of these geese went for a gardener who had gone Into its inclosure in the “xoo" and gave him a blow on the knee that laid him up for a week. The crested •creamer has actually double spurs on its wings and is a very awkward customer to tackle. All the bird<of prey use their talons as their principal weapons. The strength which lies in the talons of even a small hawk is almost incredible. As for an eagle, one has been known to drivo Its claws clean through the skull of a larges tomcat into the brain, killing the animal instantly. The pheasants are the only family of birds provided with spurs. Our domestic fowls are. of course, members of this genus, and it is in the game fowl that the’spur Is developed to the greatest perfection. These leg spurs resemble the horns of cattle, in that they have a. bony, core protected by a

smooth sheath of horn. The guinea-fowl, again, Is singular tn that It has a blunt horn upon Ite heed which it uses as an offensive weapon. - I njve never seen two herons fight, but If they did they would use thrir beaks and their beaks alone. The driving power of the long, sharppointed beak of a heron Is Immense, and when a heron Is hawked .you may see* It endeavor to spit Its smaller assailant upon its beak. An ostrich farmer tells me that be has known an ostrich to pierce a sheet of corrugated iron with one tremendous kick. —— , „ : *