Page:BirdWatcherShetlands.djvu/301

Rh hour she forgot her old partner. Winter passed by, and the next spring the pintail seemed to have become a convert to her blandishments, for they nested and produced seven or eight young ones" (p. 415). (Here, then, we have a male as coy as a female, who is wooed and ultimately won.) Again: "With one of the vultures (Cathartes aura) of the United States, parties of eight, ten, or more males and females assemble on fallen logs, exhibiting the strongest desire to please mutually" (p. 418). (Audubon, I think, is here quoted.) Again: "On the other hand, Mr. Harrison Weir has himself observed, and has heard from several breeders, that a female pigeon will occasionally take a strong fancy for a particular male, and will desert her own mate for him. Some females, according to another experienced observer, Riedel, are of a profligate disposition, and prefer almost any stranger to their own mate" (pp. 418-419). I myself had once a pigeon of this feather, and so marked was her personality, and really and strangely profligate her acts, that I have never forgotten her. Again we have: "'Sir R. Heron states that the hens have frequently great preference to a particular peacock. They were all so fond of an old pied cock that one year, when he was confined, though still in view, they were constantly assembled close to the trellis-walls of his prison, and would not suffer a japaned peacock to touch them. On his being let out in the autumn, the oldest of the hens instantly courted him, and was successful in her courtship. The next year he was shut up in a stable,