Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/235

Rh another—and, on the whole, there is a sameness in the direction of flight taken by the same pairs on different occasions. An interval of nearly two months may thus elapse between mating and nest-building, during which the sexes are not only often apart but often separated by a considerable distance.

What does this species gain by the individuals belonging to it mating so early in the season? If the appropriate condition which leads the females to seek males were to arise in each individual at a late date, the first stage in the process—mating—would not be completed before the second—the discharge of the sexual function—were due to begin. Thus, instead of having ample time, the females would have but a short period in which to discover males; and this in some cases might lead to delay, in others to failure, and in others again to needlessly severe competition, entailing physical exhaustion at a critical moment in their lives. Hence those females in which the appropriate organic condition developed early in the season would not only be more likely to find males, but would be in a position to rear more broods than those in which it developed late; and they would have a better chance of leaving offspring, which, in their turn, would reproduce the peculiarities of their parents. Moreover, within certain limitations, the more these successful females varied in the date of their development, the less, severe would be the competition, and