Bird Watching. Edmund Selous
of such movements should not be selected pari passu with the movements themselves, though of a nervous and, originally, purely automatic character. Natural selection would, in this way, develop a special intelligence in the performance of some special actions, out of proportion to the general intelligence of the creature performing them, though, no doubt, this also would tend to be thereby enlarged. And this is what, in fact, we often do see or seem to see.
I may add that when, a few days afterwards, I again approached this same nest the bird went off it without any performance of the sort. This, if we could be sure that it was the same bird, would seem to show that the habit was in an unfixed and fluctuating condition. On the other hand, a bird that acts thus in the case of its young, would, I think, always act so.
Perhaps it may be wondered why I have not included the peewit in the list of birds which employ, or appear to employ, a ruse in favour of their young ones, since this bird is always given as the stock instance of it. The reason is, that whilst the birds I mentioned have always, in my experience, gone off, so to speak, like clock-work, when the occasion for it arrived, I have never known a peewit to do so, though I have probably disturbed as many scores—perhaps hundreds—of them, under the requisite conditions, as I have units of the others. I have also inquired of keepers and warreners, and found their experience to tally with mine. They have spoken of the cock bird "leading you astray" aerially, whilst the hen sits on the nest, and of both of them flying, with screams, close about your head when the young are out, which statements I have often verified. But they have never professed to have seen a peewit flapping over the ground as with a broken wing, in the way it is so constantly said to do. I cannot, therefore, but think that, by some chance or other, an action common to many birds has been particularly, and yet wrongly, ascribed to the peewit. As it seems to me, this is just one of those cases where negative evidence is almost as strong as affirmative, and though, of course, quite ready to accept any properly witnessed instance of the peewit's acting in this way, I cannot but conclude that it does so very rarely indeed.
CHAPTER IV
Watching Wheatears, Dabchicks, Oyster-catchers, etc.
The wheatear is common over the warren-lands, and as I have been so fortunate as to witness for a whole afternoon, and very closely, a series of combined displays and combats on the part of two rival males, which struck me as very interesting, and as bearing on the question of sexual selection, I will give the account in extenso, as I noted it down from point to point between the intervals of following the birds about on my hands and knees. Should the narrative be tedious—and it is, I confess, somewhat minute—I need not ask my readers to absolve nature and give me the blame of it, for I am assured that anyone in the least degree interested in birds and their ways might have lain and watched these bizarreries a hundred times repeated, without wishing to get up and go. My observations were made on the last day but one of March, and are as follows:—
"2.30 (about).—Two male wheatears have for some time been hopping about in each other's company, and one now makes a hostile demonstration against the other. This he does by advancing and lowering the head, with the beak pointed straight forward, ruffling out the feathers, fanning the tail, and making a sudden, swift run towards him. He stops, however, before the point of actual contact, and the two birds hop about, each affecting to think very little about the other." The wheatear, I should say, always hops, and, by so doing, always give me something of a surprise, for there is that in his appearance which does not suggest hopping, but rather that he would run over the ground like a wagtail. His hops, however, are so quick, and take him forward so smoothly, that the effect on the eye is often much more like running than hopping. I therefore often speak of him as running, though, I believe, he never does so in the strict sense of the word. To continue. "After some time, during which there was nothing specially noteworthy in their behaviour, the two birds flew, one after the other, to some little distance off on a higher and more sandy part of the warren, and here a female wheatear appeared, hopping near them. One of the males at once ran to her, but had instantly to fly before the fierce wrath of the other. The hen then flew to a stunted willow in the neighbourhood, where she sat perched amongst the topmost twigs, the males not following her, but continuing to hop about in each other's vicinity as before. She remained there some five or ten minutes, when she flew out over the warrens, and with my attention concentrated on the rival birds, I lost her, and cannot say where she went down.
"One of the male wheatears now enters a shallow depression in the ground—not a hole, or the mouth of a rabbit-burrow, but one of those natural fallings away of the soil which make rugged and give a character to these sandy, lichen-clothed wastes. As soon as he is in it he seems to become excited, and running forward and coming out on the opposite brink, he flies from this to the one by which he has entered, hardly two feet off, then instantly back again, again to the other, and so backwards and forwards some dozen or twenty times, so rapidly that he makes of himself a little arch in the air constantly spanning the hollow, all in the greatest excitement. Finishing here, he runs a little way to another such depression, enters it, and coming out again, acts in precisely the same way, making the same little rapidly moving arch of two black up-and-down-pointed wings, moving now this way, now that, now forwards, now backwards, from edge to edge of the trough, perching each time on each edge of it, but so quickly, it seems rather to be on the points of the wings than the feet that he comes down. Wings are all one sees; they whirl forwards and backwards, backwards and forwards, making a little arch or bridge, the highest point of which, in the centre—which is the point of the upper wing—is some two feet from the floor of the trough, whilst the point of the lower one almost touches it. All this time the other male bird is quite near, but seems to take little notice of the performance. At length the frenzied one desists from his madness of motion, and the two now hop about over the warren as before, closely in each other's company. In some ten minutes or so there is the same display—or rather frenzy—but whether made by the same bird or the other one I am unable to say. This time it commences on the even turf and not in a hollow, but after a few throws the bird finds one and throws, thenceforth, over that." I have seen, I think, a Japanese acrobat throw a wonderful succession of somersaults backwards and forwards within his own length. With the bird there was no somersault, but the effect was something the same. The man's body also presented the appearance of an arch in the air (as when one vibrates a lighted joss-stick from side to side), but, as the bird moved much more quickly, the resemblance in its case was more perfect.
"Once or twice again, now, one of the two birds acts in the same way, always seeming to prefer to do so over a depression in the ground. One then flies up a little way into the air, descends again, and, on alighting, instantly recommences as before, again, I think, over a slight hollow. The motion is equally violent, but not so long continued, some seven or eight flings, perhaps, in all. At the end of it he stops still, advances the head straight forwards, lowering it a trifle, swells the feathers, and broadly fans the tail. Then the two birds fly at each other, but almost in the act of closing they part, with a little twitter, and commence hopping over the warren as before. It is a constant little run of hops, a pause, and then another little run of hops, each bird following the other about in turn, the distance between them being, as a rule, from two or three feet to five or six paces.
"3.10.—Another little fly up into the air, followed by the frenzied dance on descending. Then the two come together in the mouth of a rabbit-burrow, fly at each other as before, separate again almost immediately, and continue their hopping over the warren, the one still dogging the other.
"3.30.—The two fly at each other as though to fight; but, again, just as they seem about to meet, they avoid, and quicker than the eye can follow they are a yard or so apart. One of them then dances violently from one depression of the soil to another, arching the space between the two; at the end of it he fans out the tail and stands looking defiantly at his rival, who fans his and returns the glance, then makes a little run towards him, sweeping the ground with it. Instead of fighting, however, which both