Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/353

Rh the impulse to seek isolation ceases for a time to dominate the situation. The inference, therefore, is that atmospheric changes bear some relation to the functioning of the instinct; but whether it be temperature, or humidity, or the direction and velocity of the wind, or a combination of two or more of these factors that supplies the stimulus, we cannot tell.

The appropriate organic condition and the stimulus have then still to be determined, and we must pursue our inquiry from the point at which the impulse comes into functional activity. We will take a simple case, and one free from complication.

Let us suppose that there is an area bereft of bird life, if it can be so imagined, but in proximity to other inhabited areas. Into this area, whilst in search of isolation, let us imagine that a Yellow Bunting finds its way. After the manner of its race it establishes a territory and occupies, let us say at a low computation, half an acre of ground. It then obtains a mate, breeds, and rears offspring, two of which we will assume are males. Reproduction ended, the birds desert the area, and in the following spring, when the impulse again asserts itself, parents and offspring seek again their former haunts. We now have three males, each of which occupies half an acre, and each of which rears two offspring—that is the position at the close of the second year. In the third year the number will have increased to nine and the area occupied to 4½ acres; and so on in succeeding years, until by the beginning of