Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/101

Rh —quite a different story. I have no wish to juggle with words, but when originally employing the term "devices," the aerial evolutions and weird, fantastic wheelings of the cock bird—then popularly supposed to be the hen—alone were in my mind. The facts, broadly stated, according to my experience, are these:—While the female is sitting the male keeps guard, and on the approach of an intruder tries to mislead and confuse him—three or four other cocks will occasionally assist—by aerial devices, his mate, meantime, running quickly and silently away from the nest for a considerable distance. When the eggs are hatched, however, very different tactics prevail; both parents are then assiduous in their clamorous endeavours to draw intruders away from where their young are concealed. I may add that some years ago I took the trouble to look up and tabulate what upwards of thirty authors of books on birds had to say on the point at issue, and I found that Selby alone of the entire number had got the thethe [sic] true facts correctly. It is unquestionably the rule for the female to run from the nest when danger threatens, but I have known a sitting bird, come upon very suddenly from over a hill and taken quite unawares, to fly direct from her nest; and I have studied the point sufficiently to learn that the female will also fly from the nest at times if she has already been somewhat disturbed, and I have always regarded such action as meaning—Oh! the whereabouts of my nest is known; why should I any longer have recourse to a useless artifice to conceal it?— (Melton Mowbray).

Pairing Manœuvres of Birds.—With reference to Mr. Selous' recent remarks on the similarity of the pairing manoeuvres of both sexes in certain birds, I should like to draw attention to the Satin Bower-bird (Ptilorhynchus violaceus) as a good example of this. I often observed these birds, during my stay in England last summer, at the London Zoological Gardens, and repeatedly noticed that the female uttered the same absurd fizzling song as the male, and used the same gestures. I especially noticed that both sexes frequently jerked up the closed wings, thus, in the case of the hen, showing their yellow lining. Now, if the male of this bird were conspicuously coloured on the under side of the wings, and used this gesture as he does at present, it would be put down as designed for a sexual attraction; and as the female birds are supposed, with much reason, to frequently exhibit a former stage in the colouration of the male, it may be suggested that in this case the colouration of the wings and the trick of lifting them was originally masculine; and that the male, having acquired his purple plumage, has still retained it, just as the dull-coloured grey forms of the tame