Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/315

Rh exposure could be obtained without some such control.

Some birds, however, have no difficulty in finding the necessary food for their young, yet have great difficulty in finding a station where they can rear their young in safety; and the area each one occupies has been reduced to the smallest proportions in order that the maximum number can be accommodated. Here, any increase in the size of the territory would inevitably lead to the extinction of the race, so that nothing stands between failure and success except the ability of the bird to defend its territory. If we study the bird population at one of the breeding stations on the coast, we find, generally speaking, that each kind of bird inhabits a particular portion of the cliff; on the lower ledges are the Guillemots and Kittiwake Gulls; higher up are Razorbills and Fulmars, and at the top, where the cliff is broken and the, face of the rock covered with turf and soil, the Puffin finds shelter for its egg. At the same time there is much overlapping; the kind of ledge that suits a Razorbill is equally suitable for a Guillemot or a Fulmar, and so, no matter how successful the Razorbill may be in establishing a territory and preventing intrusion upon it by other Razorbills, it will be all to no purpose if it allows itself to be jostled out of its position by a Fulmar. Hence, inasmuch as breeding stations are limited and competition for territory so severe, only those forms in which the fighting