Bird Watching. Edmund Selous
to me, the following will show:—
"Most interesting aerial nuptial evolutions of the male and female stock-dove.—They navigate the air together, following each other in the closest manner, one being, almost all the while, just above the other, their wings seeming to pulsate in time as soldiers (if sweet birds will forgive such a simile) keep step. Now they rise, now sink, making a wide, irregular circle. Both seem to wish, yet not to wish, to touch, almost, yet not quite, doing so, till, when very close, the upper one drops lightly towards the one beneath him, who sinks too; yet for a moment you hear the wings clap against each other. This sounds faintly, though very perceptibly; but the distance is great, and it must really be loud. Every now and again the wings will cease to vibrate, and the two birds sweep through the air on spread pinions, but, otherwise, in the manner that has been described. I must have watched this continuing for at least a quarter of an hour before they sunk to the ground together, still maintaining the same relative position, and with quivering wings as before. Here, however, something distracted me, the glasses lost them, and I did not see them actually alight. Another pair rise right from the ground in this manner,[2] one directly above the other, quiver upwards to some little height, then sweep off on spread pinions, following each other, but still at slightly different elevations. They overtake one another, quiver up still higher, with hardly an inch between them, then suddenly, with an, as it were, 'enough of this,' sweep apart and float in lovely circles, now upwards now downwards. As they do this another bird rushes through the air to join them, he circles too, all three are circling, the light glinting on one, falling from another, thrown and caught and thrown again as if they played at ball with light."
[2] But I did not see what they were doing before they rose.
I thought, therefore, that birds when they flew in pairs like this were disporting themselves together in a nuptial flight, and making—as indeed this, in any case, is true—a very pretty display of it. What was there, indeed—or what did there seem to be—to indicate that angry passions lay at the root of all this loveliness? But I had not taken sufficiently into consideration that sharp clap of the wings indicating a blow—a severe one—on the part of one of the birds with a parry on that of the other. This is how stock-doves, as well as other pigeons, fight on the ground, and it is as an outcome and continuation of these fierce stand-up combats—which there is no mistaking—that the contending birds rise and hover one over the other, in the manner described. My notes will, I think, show this, as well as the curious and, as it were, formal manner in which the ground-tourney is conducted.
Stock-doves: A Duel with Ceremonies.
"Two stock-doves fighting.—This is very interesting and peculiar. They fight with continual blows of the wings, these being used both as sword—or, rather, partisan—and shield. The peculiarity, however, is this, that every now and again there is a pause in the combat, when both birds make the low bow, with tail raised in air, as in courting. Sometimes both will bow together, and, as it would seem, to each other—facing towards each other, at any rate—but at other times they will both stand in a line, and bow, so that one bows only to the tail of the other, who bows to the empty air. Or the two will bow at different times, each seeming more concerned in making his bow than in the direction or bestowal of it. It is like a little interlude, and when it is over the combatants advance, again, against each other, till they stand front to front, and quite close. Both, then, make a little jump, and battle vigorously with their wings, striking and parrying. One now makes a higher spring, trying, apparently, to jump on to his opponent's back, and then strike down upon him. This is all plain, honest fighting, but there is a constant tendency—constantly carried out—for the two to get into line, and fight in a sort of follow-my-leader fashion, whilst making these low bows at intervals. It is a fight encumbered with forms, with a heavy, punctilious ceremony, reminding one of those ornate sweeps and bowing rapier-flourishes which are entered into before and at each pause in the duel between Hamlet and Laertes, as arranged by Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum. There were four or five birds together when this fight broke out, but I could not feel quite sure whether the non-fighting ones watched the fighting of the other two. If they did, I do not think they were at all keenly interested in it. Also, the fighting birds may sometimes, when they bowed, have done so to the birds that stood near, but it never seemed to me that this was the case, and it certainly was not so in most instances."
In the spring from the ground which one of the fighting birds sometimes makes, coming down on the other one's back and striking with the wings, we have, perhaps, the beginning of what may develop into a contest in the clouds, for let the bird that is undermost also spring up, and both are in the air in the position required; and it is natural that the undermost should continue to rise, because it could more easily avoid the blows of the other whilst in the air, by sinking down through it, than it could on the ground at such a disadvantage. Whether, in the following instance, the one bird jumped on to the other's back does not appear, but, as will be seen, the flight, which I had thought to be of a sexual and nuptial character, was the direct outcome of a scrimmage. "A short fight between two birds.—It is really most curious. There is a blow and then a bow, then a vigorous set-to, with hard blows and adroit parries, a pause with two profound bows, another set-to, and then the birds rise, one keeping just above the other, and ascend slowly, with quickly and constantly beating wings, in the way so often witnessed. It would appear, therefore, that the curious flights of two birds up into the air, the one of them exactly over, and almost touching, the other—wherein, as I have noted, there is frequently a blow with the wings which, to judge by the sound reaching me from a considerable distance, must be sometimes a severe one—are the aerial continuations of combats commenced on the ground." Sometimes, that is to say. There seems no reason why birds accustomed thus to contend, should not sometimes do so ab initio, and without any preliminary encounter on mother earth—and this, I believe, is the case.
Here, then, in the stock-dove we have at the nuptial season a kind of flight which seems certainly to be of the nature of a combat, very much resembling that of the peewit at the same season. I have seen peewits fighting on the ground, and once they were for a moment in the air together at a foot or two above it, and the one a little above the other. This, however, may have been mere chance, and I have not seen the one form of combat arise unmistakably out of the other, as in the case of the stock-doves. But assuming that in each case there is a combat, is it certain that the contending birds are always, or generally, two males, and not male and female? It certainly seems natural to suppose this, but with the stock-dove, at any rate (and I believe with pigeons generally), the two sexes sometimes fight sharply; and, moreover, the female stock-dove bows to the male, as well as the male to the female, both which points will be brought out in the following instances:—
"A hen bird is sitting alone on the sand, a male flies up to her and begins bowing. She does not respond, but walks away, and, on being followed and pressed, stands and strikes at her annoyer with the wings, and there is, then, a short fight between the two. At the end of it, and when the bowing pigeon has been driven off and is walking away, having his tail, therefore, turned to the one he is leaving, this one also bows, once only, but quite unmistakably. The bow was directed towards her retiring adversary, and also wooer, the two birds therefore standing in a line." And on another occasion "A stock-dove flies to another sitting on the warrens, and bows to her, upon which she also bows to him. Yet his addresses are not successfully urged."
The sexes are here assumed, for the male and female stock-dove do not differ sufficiently for one to distinguish them at a distance through the glasses. When, however, one sees a bird fly, like this, to another one and begin the regular courting action, one seems justified in assuming it to be a male and the other a female. Both, however, bowed, and there was a fight, though a short one (I have seen others of longer duration), between them. It becomes, therefore, a question whether the much more determined fights which I have witnessed are not also between the male and the female stock-dove, and not between two males. If so, the origin of the conflict is, probably, in all such