Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/138

92 air, and sometimes even on the ground, and fighting thus they gradually approach and pass beyond the limits of the territory. Whereupon a change comes over the scene; the male whose territory was intruded upon and ^yho all along had displayed such animosity, betrays no further interest in the conflict—it ceases to attack, searches around for food, or sings, and slowly makes its way back towards the centre of the territory.

Scenes of this kind are of almost daily occurrence wherever a species is so common, or the environment to which it is adapted so limited in extent, that males are obliged to occupy adjacent ground. The Moor-Hen abounds on all suitable sheets of water, and it is a bird that can be conveniently studied because, as a rule, there is nothing, except the rushes that fringe the pool, to hinder us from obtaining a panoramic view of the whole proceedings, and moreover the area occupied by each individual is comparatively small. Towards the middle of February, symptoms of sexual organic change make themselves apparent, and the pool is then no longer the resort of a peaceable community; quarrels become frequent, and as different portions of the surface of the water are gradually appropriated, so the fighting becomes more incessant and more severe. Each individual has its own particular territory, embracing a piece of open water as well as a part of the rush-covered fringe, within which it moves and lives. But in the early part of the season, when the