Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/290

228 When, for example, a Kestrel approaches its territory, it leaves the tree, bush, or rock upon which it was resting, utters its characteristic cry, and soars rapidly upwards; then, rising to a considerable height, it swoops down upon the Kestrel, and by alternately stooping at and chasing its opponent, drives it away from the immediate neighbourhood.

What we have, then, to consider is, Do these battles between different species contribute towards the attainment of the end for which the whole territorial system has been evolved?

Let us take the individual and see whether we can establish any relation between the hostility it displays towards members of other species and its general disposition to secure a territory. We must remember that a male can have no knowledge of the prospective value of its behaviour, nor is it likely that it has any ulterior purpose in ejecting other males, beyond the pleasure it derives from satisfying its impulse to do so. The proximate end of its behaviour is to attack, nothing more, and this, of course, it can only do just in so far as the intruder evokes the appropriate instinct.

Now the arguments we shall employ will, on the whole, be similar to those which we made use of in the second chapter, wherein we attempted to ascertain the conditions under which a male becomes intolerant of other males of its own species, and examined more especially the claims of the "territory" as opposed to those of the "female." But here