Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/105

Rh any particular condition in the environment, and hence for a time the bird oscillates between two modes of behaviour—between that one organised by frequent repetition and that one determined by the functioning of this new disposition.

To look at the matter broadly, it is scarcely likely that so definite a mode of behaviour would recur with such regularity, generation after generation, in the individuals belonging to so many widely divergent forms, if it had no root in the inborn constitution of the bird. But the law of habit formation has its part to play also. By itself it is inadequate; yet it probably does assist very materially in adding still greater definition, and it probably is responsible in a large measure for determining the limits of the territory according to the conditions of existence of the species—thus the Falcon seeks its prey over wide tracts of land, and, by hunting over certain ground repeatedly, establishes a routine, which broadly fixes the area occupied; the Woodpecker cannot find food upon every tree, and every forest does not contain the necessary trees, and therefore the bird regulates its flight according to the position of the trees; and the Warbler, finding food close at hand, does not need to travel far, and the area it occupies is consequently small.

So that the most likely solution of the problem will be found in a combination of our second and third propositions; that is to say, in