Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/35

Rh the other, and impossible to regard the voice as the medium through which an effectual union of the sexes is procured. But there is reason to believe that the males utilise their powers of producing sound only under certain well-defined conditions. For instance, when they are on their way to the breeding grounds, or moving from locality to locality in search of isolation, or when they desert their territories temporarily, as certain of the residents often do, they are generally silent; but when they are in occupation of their territories they become vociferous—and this is notoriously the case during the early hours of the day, which is the period of maximum activity so far as sexual behaviour is concerned. So that just at the moment when the sexual impulse of the female is most susceptible to stimulation, the males are betraying their positions and are thus a guide to her movements. Nevertheless, even though she may have discovered a male ready to breed, success is not necessarily assured to her; for with multitudes of individuals striving to procreate their kind, it would be surprising if there were no clashing of interests, if no two females were ever to meet in the same occupied territory. Competition of this kind is not uncommon, and the final appeal is to the law of battle, just as an appeal to physical strength sometimes decides the question of the initial ownership of a territory.

I shall try to make clear the relations of the various parts to the whole with the