Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/137

Rh think that the close relationship between the warfare on the one hand and the territory on the other will be fully admitted.

Formerly I deemed the spring rivalry to be the result of accidental encounters, and I believed that an issue to a struggle was only reached when one of the combatants succumbed or disappeared from the locality, a view which neither recognised method nor admitted control. Recent experience has shown, however, that I was wrong, and that there is a very definite control over and above that which is supplied by the physical capabilities of the birds.

Let us take some common species, the Willow-Warbler being our first example; and, having found three adjoining territories occupied by unpaired males, let us study the conflicts at each stage in the sexual life of the three individuals, observing them before females have arrived upon the scene, again when one or two of the three males have secured mates, and yet again when all three have paired. Now we shall find that the" conditions which lead up to and which terminate the conflicts are remarkably alike at each of these periods. A male intrudes, and the intrusion evokes an immediate display of irritation on the part of the owner of the territory, who, rapidly uttering its song and jerking its wings, begins hostilities. Flying towards the intruder, it attacks viciously, and there follows much fluttering of wings and snapping or clicking of bills. At one moment the birds are in the tree-tops, at another in the