Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/247

Rh food at a greater distance, can it be doubted that the cumulative effect of even a few minutes of additional exposure would have been detrimental, if not disastrous, to the offspring?

We speak, however, of the parents extending their journeys a little farther in this direction or a little farther in that, as though they could do so with impunity except in so far as it affected themselves, or their offspring, or the other Yellow Buntings inhabiting that particular area. But, most certainly, any extension would have meant so much encroachment upon the available means of support of other members of the species inhabiting adjoining areas, whose young in turn would have been liable to have been affected; and, with even greater certainty, the Whitethroats, the Stonechats, the Tree-Pipits, and the Willow-Warblers that had also established themselves in that one corner of the Common would have been hard pressed to find sufficient food with sufficient rapidity. Let me give another illustration of a somewhat different kind. Lapwings, as we saw in the previous chapters, establish territories and guard them from intrusion with scrupulous care. The young are able to leave the nest soon after they are hatched, and consequently the parents are not necessarily obliged to bring food to them—they can, if they so choose, lead them to the food. Whether each pair limits its search for food to its territory. I do not know. But even supposing that all ownership of territory were to lapse directly the young were hatched,