the midst of the strife both birds bow, several times, according to their custom, and we then feel sure that both are males. Meanwhile, however, our assured female, who has been left where she was, is seen to bow to another bird who has alighted near her, upon which we change our minds, conclude that she is a male after all, and that what we, at first, thought to be courtship, was only a fight between two cocks. And thus we go on, correcting and correcting our opinion—until in a gathering of perhaps a dozen or more stock-doves there would seem to be no female at all—because if they were pheasants or blackcocks the hens would not behave in this way. Again, when one first sees a shag throw itself down before another one, and go through a variety of strange gestures to which the latter makes no response—if not by a caress of the bill—it is impossible not to feel sure that the bird thus acting is the male shag, and the other the female. But when one afterwards sees two birds at the nest—male and female beyond a doubt—mutually or alternately performing some portion of these antics, though without the primary prostration,[1] what is one to think then? In such cases as these, where the sexes are not to be distinguished except by dissection, or having the bird in one's hands, we cannot be sure that it is always the male we see displaying to the female, and never the female to the male. I believe, however, that we have tacitly assumed this to be the case.
An incident which I have recorded elsewhere seems
- ↑ I instance only what I have actually seen, and go no farther.
