Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/280

218 gain possession of the hole which the Woodpecker with much skill has drilled for itself. As far as my experience goes, the Starling is always the aggressor, and there is only too good reason to fear that, in the course of time, the Green Woodpecker will disappear as a result of the greater fertility and tenacity of its enemy. The Martin suffers a similar kind of persecution from the House-Sparrow, and here again there is reason to believe that the greater virility of the Sparrow will hasten the extinction of its rival. In cases of this description the purpose of the fighting is clear, and one can understand why such divergent species should be hostile to one another; yet others, equally remote in the scale of nature, are hostile when no such ostensible reason can be assigned for their hostility. Few birds are more pugnacious than the Moor-Hen, and the determined manner in which different individuals fight with one another is notorious. But the intolerance it displays towards other species is no less remarkable, and its pugnacious instinct seems to be peculiarly susceptible to stimulation by different individuals belonging to widely divergent forms. At one moment a Lapwing may be attacked, at another a Thrush or a Starling, harmless strangers that have approached the pool to drink; even a Water-Rail, as it threads its way through the rushes, may fail to escape detection; and, which is still more curious, a covey of Partridges will evoke response if they approach the pool too closely.