Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/63

Rh building its nest, and of rearing its young antecedent to experience—racial preparation has fitted it thus far; why then exclude the other event in the series, the earlier departure of the male, from hereditary equipment? If the journey were a casual affair without any goal attaching to it, if the males upon arrival wandered about in search of a mate, there would be some ground for thinking that a vague recollection of the whole former experience was sufficient to explain the hurried return; but since the pleasurable effect of association, founded upon previous experience of a definite place, cannot well be established, and since it is so difficult to study the objective aspect of the behaviour in question without coming to the conclusion that the journey is related to the appropriation of a place suitable for the rearing of offspring, one is tempted to ask whether the hurried return may not also be so related.

Now the males of some of the migratory species, especially of those which are accustomed to return to their breeding haunts early in the season, are called upon to face greater dangers and have a greater strain imposed upon their strength by starting forth upon their journey ten days or a fortnight before their prospective mates. The blizzards which so often sweep across the northern parts of Europe in the latter half of March, destroying in their course the all too scanty supply of insect life, may take toll of their numbers; or the westerly gales, which are not infrequent at that period,