Sublime

Qué ridículo parece el comportamiento de la pava en estas circunstancias: acepta a un enemigo natural solo porque pía y maltrata o mata a uno de su polluelos simplemente porque no lo hace. Actúa como un autómata cuyo instinto maternal estuviese controlado por ese único sonido.

‘a curious octopus.

On Watson’s account therefore, the “butterfly preservationist” is not curious whereas the “butterfly collector” is because the former is not motivated to acquire whereas the latter is.

DO YOU KNOW WHY THE PRISONER IN THE TOWER WATCHES THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS?

Sherman Eager, an officer in the Lost Battalion, who decades after the war brought his children to see Cher Ami at the Smithsonian and told them, “You all owe your lives to that pigeon.” Whatever the facts may be, the story of the self-sacrificing winged savior proved irresistible.[8]

One little bird, however, performs a migratory feat reminiscent of birds’ wintering-on-the-moon days: starting out from Alaska, the blackpoll warbler flies three thousand miles east to Nova Scotia. There he gorges himself on webworms and sawflies and gets fat while waiting for a strong northwest wind to blow him off his twig out over the Atlantic O

Then, in 1962, the Scottish ecologist V. C. Wynne-Edwards, a careful observer of his country’s native red grouse, concluded that these birds sometimes sacrificed their reproductive privileges to keep their flock from starvation. The grouse, Wynne-Edwards contended, gauged the amount of food the moors could provide each year and adjusted their behav