It Is Surprising That They Have Not Become Wilder;
For These Islands During The Last Hundred And Fifty Years Have
Been frequently visited by bucaniers and whalers; and the
sailors, wandering through the wood in search of tortoises,
always take
Cruel delight in knocking down the little birds.
These birds, although now still more persecuted, do not
readily become wild. In Charles Island, which had then
been colonized about six years, I saw a boy sitting by a well
with a switch in his hand, with which he killed the doves
and finches as they came to drink. He had already procured
a little heap of them for his dinner, and he said that he had
constantly been in the habit of waiting by this well for the
same purpose. It would appear that the birds of this
archipelago, not having as yet learnt that man is a more
dangerous animal than the tortoise or the Amblyrhynchus,
disregard him, in the same manner as in England shy birds, such
as magpies, disregard the cows and horses grazing in our fields.
The Falkland Islands offer a second instance of birds
with a similar disposition. The extraordinary tameness of
the little Opetiorhynchus has been remarked by Pernety,
Lesson, and other voyagers. It is not, however, peculiar to
that bird: the Polyborus, snipe, upland and lowland goose,
thrush, bunting, and even some true hawks, are all more or
less tame. As the birds are so tame there, where foxes,
hawks, and owls occur, we may infer that the absence of all
rapacious animals at the Galapagos, is not the cause of their
tameness here.
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