King Solomon's Ring - Taylor & Francis eBooks

King Solomonrsquos Ring

lsquoIt is one of the best and most penetrating non-technicalbooks about animals and animal nature that has ever beenwritten every sensitive reader will agree that the bookis a work of humanity wisdom and balance as well as ofdelightful humourrsquo

W H Thorpe

lsquoFor great interest amusement and relaxationmdashin short forunalloyed pleasuremdashlet nothing stop you from getting holdof a copyrsquo

Liverpool Post

lsquoRich entertainment the reader will hardly know whichis most astonishing the creatures so originally observedor the naturalist who observes themrsquo

V S Pritchett

lsquoKonrad Lorenz writes of animals in a way which wouldmake anyone of the impressionable age decide to be a nat-uralist and nothing else This book is delightful andinformative to the ordinary reader but its real message isto the philosopher There is a mine of information here forthe study of that inexplicable organ the mind We canlearn about animals we may also learn much from themrsquo

Dame C V Wedgwood

Konrad

LorenzKing Solomonrsquos Ring

New light on animal ways

With a foreword by Julian Huxley

Illustrated by the author

Translated by Marjorie Kerr Wilson

London and New York

Er redete mit dem Vieh den Voumlgeln und den Fischenfirst published 1949by Verlag Dr Borotha-Schoeler Vienna

English edition first published 1952by Methuen amp Co Ltd

First published in Routledge Classics 2002by Routledge11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE29 West 35th Street New York NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group

copy 1983 Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH amp Co KGTranslation copy 1999 Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag Gmbh amp Co KGThis edition copy 2002 Routledge

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprintedor reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronicmechanical or other means now known or hereafterinvented including photocopying and recording or inany information storage or retrieval system withoutpermission in writing from the publishers

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataA catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0ndash415ndash26747ndash1 (pbk)ISBN 0ndash415ndash26746ndash3 (hbk)

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2004

ISBN 0-203-16596-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-26059-7 (Adobe eReader Format)

ToMr and Mrs J B Priestley

without whose timely helpjackdaws

would notmdashin all probabilitymdashbe flying round Altenberg any more

CONTENTS

Foreword by Julian Huxley ixPreface xv

Animals as a Nuisance 11Something that Does No Damage the Aquarium 92Robbery in the Aquarium 163Poor Fish 214Laughing at Animals 385Pitying Animals 486Buying Animals 567The Language of Animals 738The Taming of the Shrew 889The Covenant 10810The Perennial Retainers 12211Morals and Weapons 17012

Index 189

FOREWORD

by Julian Huxley

Konrad Lorenz is one of the outstanding naturalists of our day Ihave heard him referred to as the modern Fabre but with birdsand fishes instead of insects and spiders as his subject-matterHowever he is more than that for he is not only like Fabre aprovider of an enormous volume of new facts and penetratingobservations with a style of distinction and charm but in addi-tion has contributed in no small degree to the basic principlesand theories of animal mind and behaviour For instance it is tohim more than any other single man that we owe our knowledgeof the existence of the strange biological phenomena ofldquoreleaserrdquo and ldquoimprintingrdquo mechanisms

The reader of this book who has followed the account of howLorenz himself became ldquoimprintedrdquo on his baby goslings astheir parent or how his jackdaws regarded him as their generalleader and companion but chose other corvine birds (so long asthey were on the wing) as flight companions and fixed on hismaid-servant as a ldquolove-objectrdquo or how certain attitudes or ges-tures on the part of a fighting-fish or a wolf will act as releasers

to promote or inhibit combat reactions in another individual ofthe species will realize not only the strangeness of the facts butthe fundamental nature of the principles that underly them

Of course Other naturalists too have worked along similarlines I think of the pioneering studies of Lloyd Morgan inBritain of Whitman in America of the Heinroths in Germanyof the remarkable researches of the late Kingsley Noble of NewYork on the behaviour of lizards and of Tinbergen of Hollandand Oxford on releasers in sticklebacks and herring-gulls and ofthe detailed illustration of the principles involved by a host ofobservers and students most of them ornithologists in westernEurope and North America But it remains true that Lorenz hasdone more than any single man to establish the principles and toformulate the essential ideas behind them And then Lorenz hasgiven himself over body and soul to his self-appointed task ofreally understanding animals more thoroughly than any otherbiologist-naturalist that I can think of This has involved keepinghis objects of study in what amounts to the wild state with fullfreedom of movement His readers will discover all that this hasmeant in the way of hard work and inconveniencemdashsometimesamusing in retrospect but usually awkward enough or evenserious at the time

But the labour and the inconvenience have been abundantlyjustified by the results Indeed they were necessary for thanks tosuch work by Lorenz (and by other devoted lovers and studentsof animals) it has become clear that animals do not reveal thehigher possibilities of their nature and behaviour nor the fullrange of their individual diversity except in such conditions offreedom Captivity cages minds as well as bodies and rigidexperimental procedure limits the range of performance whilefreedom liberates the creaturesrsquo capacities and permits theobserver to study their fullest developments

The value of Lorenzrsquos methods is strikingly exemplified in hislong chapter on his jackdawsmdashone of the most illuminating

forewordx

accounts ever given of the life of a social organism The strangeblend of automatic reaction intelligence and insight shown bythese birds the curious mechanisms of their social behaviourwhich on the whole make for law and order and the safeguard-ing of weaker members of the colony (though none of thebehaviour is undertaken with any such purpose in view) thedifference between avian communication and human languagethe presence of what if it were to be exhibited by men wouldbe called chivalrous behaviour (but its total absence in non-socialspecies like the turtle-dove which in spite of its gentle reputa-tion can be guilty of the most brutal cruelty to a defeated rivalwhich cannot escape) the extraordinary and I believe the onlyestablished case of the social transmission of the knowledge thatcertain creatures are to be treated as enemiesmdashall this and muchelse is set forth by Lorenz in such a way that his readers willnever again be guilty of anthropomorphising a bird nor of theequal intellectual misdemeanour of ldquomechanomorphizingrdquo itand reducing it to the false over-simplification of a mere systemof reflexes

However it is not only with birds that Lorenz is at homeHis account of the reproductive life of fighting-fish andsticklebacksmdashthe combats and displays of the males thereactions of the females the malesrsquo parental care of their youngis equally brilliant and penetrating If the behaviour of fish doesnot rise quite to the same height as that of birds it is certainlymuch more extraordinary than most people have any idea ofAnd the description of how a certain male fighting-fish resolveda conflict is an admirable scientific account of a very unusualphenomenonmdashan animal making up its mind when it possessesonly a rather poorly developed mind to make up

All this new and important scientific description is not merelypresented with the most lucid simplicity but enlivened withsome extremely entertaining embellishments Poor Lorenz beingforced to spend hours crouched on his knees or crawling on

foreword xi

hands and feet and quacking loudly at frequent intervals ifhe was to fulfil his role as ldquoimprintedrdquo parent of a brood ofducklings his assistant suddenly realizing he was talking gooseinstead of duck to the same ducklings and cutting short hisgoose-talk with ldquono I mean quah quah quahrdquo Lorenzrsquos old fatherwalking back to the house from his outdoor siesta indignantlyholding up his trousers because Lorenzrsquos tame cockatoo hadbitten all the buttons off all his clothesmdashcoat buttons waistcoatbuttons braces buttons and fly buttonsmdashand laid them out inorder on the ground Lorenz calling down the same cockatoofrom high up in the air by emitting repeated cockatoo-screams(visitors to the parrot house at the Zoo will remember what thatmeans) on a crowded railway platformmdashthese and variousother incidents that he records I shall long chuckle over

But I do not wish to stand between Lorenz and his readers Iwill conclude by expressing my fullest agreement with himwhen he repudiates the unimaginative and blinkered outlook ofthose who think that it is ldquoscientificrdquo to pretend that somethingrich and complex is merely its jejune and simple elements andin particular that the brains of higher organisms such as birdsthose complex body-minds with their elaborate emotionalbehaviour are ldquoreallyrdquo nothing but reflex machines like a bit ofspecial cord magnified and supplied with special sense-organsand equally so when he repudiates the uncritical and often wish-ful thinking of the sentimental anthropomorphizers who notmerely refuse to take the trouble to understand the radicallydifferent nature of animalsrsquo minds and behaviour from our ownbut in fact are satisfying some repressed urge of their ownunconscious by projecting human attributes into bird and beast

As he rightly says the truth is more extraordinary and moreinteresting than any such futile imaginings He might haveadded that the truth is also necessary Only if we know and facethe truth about the world whether the world of physics andchemistry or of geology and biology or of mind and behaviour

forewordxii

shall we be able to see what is our own true place in that worldOnly as we discover and assimilate the truth about nature shallwe be able to undertake the apparently contradictory butessential task of re-establishing our unity with nature while atthe same time maintaining our transcendence over natureThe work of men like Lorenz is a very real contribution to ourunderstanding of our relations with that important part ofnature constituted by the higher animals

foreword xiii

PREFACE

There was never a king like SolomonNot since the world beganYet Solomon talked to a butterflyAs a man would talk to a man

Rudyard Kipling

As Holy Scripture tells us the wise King Solomon the son ofDavid ldquospake also of beasts and of fowl and of creeping thingsand of fishesrdquo (I Kings 33) A slight misreading of this textwhich very probably is the oldest record of a biological lecturehas given rise to the charming legend that the king was able totalk the language of animals which was hidden from all othermen Although this venerable tale that he spake to the animalsand not of them certainly originated from a misunderstanding Ifeel inclined to accept it as a truth I am quite ready to believethat Solomon really could do so even without the help of themagic ring which is attributed to him by the legend in questionand I have very good reason for crediting it I can do it myselfand without the aid of magic black or otherwise I do not think

it is very sporting to use magic rings in dealing with animalsWithout supernatural assistance our fellow creatures can tell usthe most beautiful stories and that means true stories becausethe truth about nature is always far more beautiful even thanwhat our great poets sing of it and they are the only realmagicians that exist

I am not joking by any means In so far as the ldquosignal coderdquo ofa species of social animal can be called a language at all it can beunderstood by a man who has got to know its ldquovocabularyrdquo asubject to which a whole chapter in this book is devoted Ofcourse lower and non-social animals do not have anything thatcould even in a very wide sense be compared with a languagefor the very simple reason that they do not have anything to sayFor the same reason it is impossible to say anything to them itwould indeed be exceedingly difficult to say anything that wouldinterest some of the lower ldquocreeping thingsrdquo But by knowingthe ldquovocabularyrdquo of some highly social species of beast or bird itis often possible to attain to an astonishing intimacy and mutualunderstanding In the dayrsquos work of a scientist investigatinganimal behaviour this becomes a matter of course and ceases tobe a source of wonder but I still retain the clear-cut memoryof a very funny episode which with all the suddenness ofphilosophical realization brought to my full consciousness whatan astounding and unique thing the close social relationbetween a human and a wild animal really is

Before I begin I must first of all describe the setting whichforms the background for most of this book The beautiful coun-try flanking the Danube on either side in the district of Altenbergis a real ldquonaturalistrsquos paradiserdquo Protected against civilization andagriculture by the yearly inundations of Mother Danube densewillow forests impenetrable scrub reed-grown marshes anddrowsy backwaters stretch over many square miles an island ofutter wildness in the middle of Lower Austria an oasis of virginnature in which red and roe deer herons and cormorants have

prefacexvi

survived the vicissitudes even of the last terrible war Here as inWordsworthrsquos beloved lakeland

The duck dabbles mid the rustling sedgeAnd feeding pike starts from the waterrsquos edgeAnd heron as resounds the trodden shoreShoots upward darting his long neck before

The virgin wildness of this stretch of country is somethingrarely found in the very heart of old Europe There is a strangecontrast between the character of the landscape and its geo-graphical situation and to the naturalistrsquos eye this contrast isemphasized by the presence of a number of American plants andanimals which have been introduced The American golden rod(Solidago virgoaurea) dominates the landscape above water as doesElodea canadensis below the surface American sun perch (Eupomotisgibbosus) and catfish (Amiurus nebulosus) are common in somebackwaters and something heavy and ponderous in the figure ofour stags betrays to the initiated that Francis Joseph I in theheyday of his hunting life introduced a few hundred head ofwapiti to Austria Muskrats are abundant having made their waydown from Bohemia where they were first released in Europeand the loud splash of their tails when they smack the surface ofthe water as a warning signal mingles with the sweet notesof the European oriole

To all this you must add the picture of Mother Danube who islittle sister to the Mississippi and imagine the River itself with its

preface xvii

broad shallow winding bed its narrow navigable channel thatchanges its course continuously unlike all other Europeanrivers and its mighty expanse of turbulent waters that alter theircolours with the season from turbid greyish yellow in springand summer to clear blue-green in late autumn and winter TheldquoBlue Danuberdquo made famous by our popular songs exists onlyin the cold season

Now imagine this queerly mixed strip of river landscape asbeing bordered by vine-covered hills brothers to those flankingthe Rhine from whose crests the two early mediaeval castles ofGreifenstein and Kreuzenstein look down with serious mienover the vast expanse of wild forest and water Then you havebefore you the landscape which is the setting of this story-bookthe landscape which I consider the most beautiful on earth asevery man should consider his own home country

One hot day in early summerwhen my friend and assistant DrSeitz and I were working on our greylag goose film a veryqueer procession slowly made its way through this beauti-ful landscape a procession as wildly mixed as the landscapeitself First came a big red dog looking like an Alaskanhusky but actually a cross between an Alsatian and a Chowthen two men in bathing trunks carrying a canoe then tenhalf-grown greylag goslings walking with all the dignitycharacteristic of their kind then a long row of thirteen tinycheeping mallard ducklings scurrying in pursuit foreverafraid of being lost and anxiously striving to keep up withthe larger animals At the end of the procession marched aqueer piebald ugly ducklinglooking like nothing on earthbut in reality a hybrid of ruddysheldrake and Egyptian gooseBut for the bathing trunks andthe moving picture camera slung across the shoulders of one of

prefacexviii

the men you might have thought you were watching a sceneout of the garden of Eden

We progressed very slowly as our pace was set by the weakestamong our little mallards and it took us some considerable timeto get to our destination a particularly picturesque backwaterframed by blossoming snowballs and chosen by Seitz to ldquoshootrdquocertain scenes of our greylag film When we arrived we atonce got down to business The title of the film says ldquoScientificdirection Dr Konrad Lorenz Camera Dr Alfred Seitzrdquo ThereforeI at once proceeded to direct scientifically this for the momentconsisting in lying down on the soft grass bordering the waterand sunning myself The green water-frogs were croaking inthe lazy way they have on summer days big dragon flies camewhirling past and a black-cap warbled its sweetly jubilant songin a bush not three yards from where I lay Farther off I couldhear Alfred winding up his camera and grumbling at the littlemallards who forever kept swimming into the picture while forthe moment he did not want anything in it but greylags In thehigher centres of my brain I was still aware that I ought to getup and help my friend by luring away the mallards and theRuddy-Egyptian but although the spirit was willing the fleshwas weak for exactly the same reason as was that of the disciplesin Gethsemane I was falling asleep Then suddenly through thedrowsy dimness of my senses I heard Alfred say in an irritatedtone ldquoRangangangang rangangangangmdashoh sorry I meanmdashquahg gegegegeg Quahg gegegegegrdquo I woke laughing he hadwanted to call away the mallards and had by mistake addressedthem in greylag language

It was at that very moment that the thought of writing a bookfirst crossed my mind There was nobody to appreciate the jokeAlfred being far too preoccupied with his work I wanted to tellit to somebody and so it occurred to me to tell it to everybody

And why not Why should not the comparative ethologistwho makes it his business to know animals more thoroughly

preface xix

than anybody else tell stories about their private lives Everyscientist should after all regard it as his duty to tell the publicin a generally intelligible way about what he is doing

There are already many books about animals both good andbad true and false so one more book of true stories cannot domuch harm I am not contending though that a good bookmust unconditionally be a true one The mental development ofmy own early childhood was without any doubt influenced ina most beneficial way by two books of animal stories whichcannot even in a very loose sense be regarded as true NeitherSelma Lagerlof rsquos Nils Holgersson nor Rudyard Kiplingrsquos Jungle Bookscontain anything like scientific truth about animals But poetssuch as the authors of these books may well avail themselves ofpoetic licence to present the animal in a way far divergent fromscientific truth They may daringly let the animal speak like ahuman being they may even ascribe human motives to itsactions and yet succeed in retaining the general style of the wildcreature Surprisingly enough they convey a true impression ofwhat a wild animal is like although they are telling fairy tales Inreading those books one feels that if an experienced old wildgoose or a wise black panther could talk they would say exactlythe things which Selma Lagerlofrsquos Akka or Rudyard KiplingrsquosBagheera say

The creative writer in depicting an animalrsquos behaviour isunder no greater obligation to keep within the bounds of exacttruth than is the painter or the sculptor in shaping an animalrsquoslikeness But all three artists must regard it as their most sacredduty to be properly instructed regarding those particulars inwhich they deviate from the actual facts They must indeed beeven better informed on these details than on others which theyrender in a manner true to nature There is no greater sin againstthe spirit of true art no more contemptible dilettantism than touse artistic licence as a specious cover for ignorance of fact

I am a scientist and not a poet and I shall not aspire in this

prefacexx

little book to improve on nature by taking any artistic libertiesAny such attempt would certainly have the opposite effect andmy only chance of writing something not entirely devoidof charm lies in strict adherence to scientific fact Thus bymodestly keeping to the methods of my own craft I may hopeto convey to my kindly reader at least a slight inkling of theinfinite beauty of our fellow creatures and their life

Altenberg January 1950

preface xxi

1ANIMALS AS A NUISANCE

Split open the kegs of salted spratsMade nests inside menrsquos Sunday hatsAnd even spoiled the womenrsquos chats

By drowning their speakingWith shrieking and squeaking

In fifty different sharps and flatsRobert Browning

Why should I tell first of the darker side of life with animalsBecause the degree of onersquos willingness to bear with this darkerside is the measure of onersquos love for animals I owe undyinggratitude to my patient parents who only shook their heads orsighed resignedly when as a schoolboy or young student I onceagain brought home a new and probably yet more destructivepet And what has my wife put up with in the course of theyears For who else would dare ask his wife to allow a tame rat torun free around the house gnawing neat little circular pieces out

of the sheets to furnish her nests which she built in even moreawkward places than menrsquos Sunday hats

Or what other wife would tolerate a cockatoo who bit off allthe buttons from the washing hung up to dry in the garden orallow a greylag goose to spend the night in the bedroom andleave in the morning by the window (Greylag geese cannot behouse-trained) And what would she say when she found outthat the nice little blue spots with which song birds after arepast of elderberries decorate all the furniture and curtains justwill not come out in the wash What would she say if Icould go on asking for twenty pages

Is all this absolutely necessary Yes quite definitely yes Ofcourse one can keep animals in cages fit for the drawingroom but one can only get to know the higher and mentallyactive animals by letting them move about freely How sadand mentally stunted is a caged monkey or parrot and howincredibly alert amusing and interesting is the same animalin complete freedom Though one must be prepared for thedamage and annoyance which is the price one has to pay forsuch house-mates one obtains a mentally healthy subject foronersquos observations and experiments This is the reason why thekeeping of higher animals in a state of unrestricted freedom hasalways been my speciality

In Altenberg the wire of the cage always played a paradoxicalrole it had to prevent the animals entering the house or frontgarden They were also strictly forbidden to go within the wirenetting that fenced in our flower beds but forbidden things havea magnetic attraction for intelligent animals as for little childrenBesides the delightfully affectionate greylag geese long forhuman society So it was always happening that before we hadnoticed it twenty or thirty geese were grazing on the flowerbeds or worse still with loud honking cries of greeting hadinvaded the closed-in veranda Now it is uncommonly difficultto repel a bird which can fly and has no fear of man The loudest

king solomonrsquos ring2

shouts the wildest waving ofarms have no effect whateverOur only really effective scare-crow was an enormous scarletgarden umbrella Like a knightwith lance at rest my wifewould tuck the folded umbrellaunder her arm and spring at the geese who were again grazing onher freshly planted beds she would let out a frantic war-cry andunfold the umbrella with a sudden jerk that was too much evenfor our geese who with a thundering of wings took to the air

Unfortunately my father largely undid all my wifersquos efforts ingoose education The old gentleman was very fond of the geeseand he particularly liked the ganders for their courageous chiv-alry so nothing could prevent him from inviting them each dayto tea in his study adjoining the glass veranda As at this timehis sight was already failing he only noticed the material resultof such a visit when he trod right into it One day as I went intothe garden towards the evening I found to my astonishmentthat nearly all the grey geese were missing Fearing the worst Iran to my fatherrsquos study and what did I see On the beautifulPersian carpet stood twenty-four geese crowded round the oldgentleman who was drinking tea at his desk quietly readingthe newspaper and holding out to the geese one piece of breadafter another The birds were somewhat nervous in theirunaccustomed surroundings and this unfortunately had anadverse effect on their intestinal movements for like all animalsthat have to digest much grass the goose has a caecum or blindappendage of the large intestine in which vegetable fibre is madeassimilable for the body by the action of cellulose-splitting bac-teria As a rule to about six or seven normal evacuations of theintestine there occurs one of the caecum and this has a peculiarpungent smell and a very bright dark green colour If a goose isnervous one caecum evacuation follows after another Since this

animals as a nuisance 3

goose tea-party more than eleven years have elapsed the darkgreen stains on the carpet have meanwhile become pale yellow

So the animals lived in complete freedom and yet in greatfamiliarity with our house They always strove towards usinstead of away from us In other households people might callldquoThe bird has escaped from its cage quick shut the windowrdquoBut with us the cry was ldquoFor goodnessrsquo sake shut the windowthe cockatoo (raven monkey etc) is trying to get inrdquo The mostparadoxical use of the ldquoinverse cage principlerdquo was invented by

my wife when our eldest son was very smallAt that time we kept several large and poten-tially dangerous animalsmdashsome ravens twogreater yellow crested cockatoos two Mon-goz Lemurs and two capuchin monkeysnone of which could safely be left alonewith the child So my wife improvised inthe garden a large cage and inside it sheput the pram

In the higher animals the ability and inclination to do damageis unfortunately in direct proportion to the degree of theirintelligence For this reason it is impossible to leave certain ani-mals particularly monkeys permanently loose and withoutsupervision With lemurs however this is possible since theylack that searching curiosity which all true monkeys display inrespect of household implements True monkeys on the otherhand even the genealogically lower-standing new world mon-keys (Platyrrhinae) have an insatiable curiosity for every objectthat is new to them and they proceed to experiment with itInteresting though that may be from the standpoint of the ani-mal psychologist for the household it soon becomes a finan-cially unbearable state of affairs I can illustrate this with anexample

As a young student I kept in my parentsrsquo flat in Vienna amagnificent specimen of a female capuchin monkey named

king solomonrsquos ring4

Gloria She occupied a large roomy cage in my study When Iwas at home and able to look after her she was allowed to runfreely about the room When I went out I shut her in the cagewhere she became exceedingly bored and exerted all her talentsto escape as quickly as possible One evening when I returnedhome after a longer absence and turned the knob of the lightswitch all remained dark as before But Gloriarsquos giggle issuingnot from the cage but from the curtain rod left no doubt as tothe cause and origin of the light defect When I returned with alighted candle I encountered the following scene Gloria hadremoved the heavy bronze bedside lamp from its stand draggedit straight across the room (unhappily without pulling the plugout of the wall) heaved it up on to the highest of my aquariaand as with a battering ram bashed in the glass lid so that thelamp sank in the water Hence the short circuit Next or perhapsearlier Gloria had unlocked my bookcasemdashan amazingachievement considering the minute size of the keymdashremovedvolumes 2 and 4 of Strumpelrsquos textbook of medicine and carriedthem to the aquarium stand where she tore them to shredsand stuffed them into the tank On the floor lay the emptybook covers but not one piece of paper In the tank sat sadsea-anemones their tentacles full of paper

The interesting part of these proceedings was the strictattention to detail with which the whole business had beenperformed Gloria must have dedicated considerable time toher experiments physically alone this accomplishment wasfor such a small animal worthy of recognition only ratherexpensive

But what are the positive values that redeem all this endlessannoyance and expense We have already mentioned that it isnecessary for certain observations to have an animal that is nota prisoner Apart from this the animal that could escape and yetremains with me affords me undefinable pleasure especiallywhen it is affection for myself that has prompted it to stay

animals as a nuisance 5

On one occasion while walking near the banks of theDanube I heard the sonorous call of a raven and when inresponse to my answering cry the great bird far up in the skyfolded its wings came whizzing down at breathless speed andwith a rush of air checked his fall on outstretched pinions toland on my shoulder with weightless ease I felt compensated forall the torn-up books and all the plundered duck nests that thisraven of mine had on his conscience The magic of such anexperience is not blunted by repetition the wonder of itremains even when it is an everyday occurrence and Odinrsquos birdhas become for me as natural a pet as to anyone else a dog orcat Real friendship with wild animals is to me so much a matterof course that it takes special situations to make me realize itsuniqueness One misty spring morning I went down to theDanube The river was still shrunk to its winter proportionsand migrating goldeneyes mergansers smews and here andthere a flock of bean- or white-fronted geese came flyingalong its dark and narrowed surface Among these migrants

quite as if they belonged to thema flock of greylag geese wingedits way I could see that the gooseflying second on the left of thetriangular phalanx had lost a

primary And in this moment there flashed across my inward eyevivid reminiscences of this goose with its missing primary andof all that had happened when it was broken For of coursethese were my greylag geese there are indeed no others on theDanube even at migration time The second bird on the left wingof the triangle was the gander Martin He had just got engaged tomy pet goose Martina and was therefore christened after her(formerly he was just a number because only the geese rearedby myself received names while those that were brought up bytheir parents were numbered) In greylag geese the youngbridegroom follows literally in the footsteps of his bride but

king solomonrsquos ring6

Martina wandered free and fearless through all the rooms ofour house without stopping to ask the advice of her bride-groom who had grown up in the garden so he was forced toventure into realms unknown to him If one considers that agreylag goose naturally a bird of open country must overcomestrong instinctive aversions in order to venture even betweenbushes or under trees one is forced to regard Martin as a littlehero as with upstretched neck he followed his bride throughthe front door into the hall and then upstairs into the bedroomI see him now standing in the room his feathers flattenedagainst his body with fear shivering with tension but proudlyerect and challenging the great unknown by loud hisses Thensuddenly the door behind him shut with a bang To remainsteadfast now was too much to ask even of a greylag goose heroHe spread his wings and flew straight as a die into thechandelier The latter lost a few appendages but Martin losta primary

So that is how I know about the missing feather of the gooseflying second in the left wing of the triangle but I know toosomething that is truly comforting when I come home from mywalk these grey geese now flying in company with wildmigrants will be standing on the steps in front of the verandaand they will come to greet me their necks outstretched in thatgesture which in geese means the same as tail-wagging in adog And as my eyes follow the geese which flying low over thewater disappear round the next bend of the river I am all at oncegripped by amazement as with that wonderment which is thebirth-act of philosophy I suddenly start to query the familiarWe have all experienced that deeply moving sensation inwhich the most everyday things suddenly stare us in the facewith altered mien as though we were seeing them for thefirst time Wordsworth became conscious of this one day whilecontemplating the Lesser Celandine

animals as a nuisance 7

I have seen thee high and lowThirty years or more and yetrsquoTwas a face I did not knowThou hast now go where I mayFifty greetings in a day

As I watched the geese it appeared to me as little short of amiracle that a hard matter-of-fact scientist should have beenable to establish a real friendship with wild free-living animalsand the realization of this fact made me strangely happy It mademe feel as though manrsquos expulsion from the Garden of Eden hadthereby lost some of its bitterness

To-day the ravens are gone the greylag geese were scatteredby the war Of all my free-flying birds only the jackdaws remainthey were the first of all the birds that I installed in AltenbergThese perennial retainers still circle round the high gables andtheir shrill cries whose meaning I understand in every detail stillecho through the shafts of the central heating into my studyAnd every year they stop up the chimneys with their nests andinfuriate the neighbours by eating their cherries

Can you understand that it is not only scientific results that arethe recompense for all this trouble and annoyance but moremuch much more

king solomonrsquos ring8