Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/285

Rh the circumstances in which they are placed. If the territory of a Thrush is invaded the Thrush is the aggressor, and, conversely, if that of the Blackbird is threatened, the Blackbird becomes the aggressor; and so, when the territories of the two birds are adjacent or overlap, as frequently they do, there is constant friction, resulting in quarrels which attract attention on account of the noisiness of the birds.

All the Warblers are exceedingly pugnacious, the fighting being especially severe between those that are very closely related. The Blackcap and the Garden-Warbler are constant rivals, and the scenes which can be witnessed when the two meet in competition are interesting from many points of view. The birds not only pursue and fight with one another, but their emotional behaviour reaches a high level of intensity—excitable outbursts of song are indulged in, tails are outspread, wings are slowly flapped, and feathers raised—in fact the attitudes assumed are similar in all respects to those which occur during the contests which are so frequent between the respective individuals of each species; and it would be difficult to point to any one item of behaviour which is not also manifest at one time or another during the battles between these rivals, and still more difficult to trace any difference iii the intensity of the excitement. And if we are satisfied that the fighting in the one case is purposive, so, too, must we regard it as having some biological purpose to serve in the other. But the