It comes as a considerable surprise to find that here and there over the world there are instances of birds with so little fear of humans that they come and perch on them. PERCHING ON PEOPLE In the Galápagos Islands, where the general fearlessness of birds is famous, one of these cases is recorded. David Lack, who was studying the biology of the Galápagos Islands' birds, found when walking through the woods on Indefatigable Island that a flycatcher would sometimes try to settle on his head. Lack stood still and found the bird's object was to pull out some of his hair. The bird, having failed to detach any of the hair of his head, tried, apparently with no better success, to pull out hair from his eyebrows and then from his chest. This was at the height of the breeding season and apparently the bird was trying to get nesting material. This seemed to be a usual type of behavior there, and Lack correlated it with the general tameness of the birds on the islands. There is a honey eater in Australia that includes in its pattern of behavior perching on people's heads and shoulders and attempting to pull out hair for use in its nest. A. H. Chisholm writes of going to certain places and taking companions with him for the sake of experiencing this, and the practice is so common with the species that Australians refer to this honey eater as "the hair dresser." In this case it is not tameness alone. The white-eared honey eater, which indulges in this practice, is no more tame most of the time than any of the other small local birds that live in that part of Australia. Only at nesting time does it attempt to light on persons. Chisholm correlates this hair-plucking trait with other habits of the honey eater: he speaks of its gathering hair from such animals as rock wallabies and gathering bristles from farmyard pigs and goats.