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I have alluded to the aerial combats of the stock-dove during the nuptial season as elucidating similar movements on the part of the peewit, though I was not able so fully to satisfy myself as to the meaning of these in the latter bird. The fighting of birds on the wing has sometimes—to my eye, at least—a very soft and delicate appearance, which does not so much resemble fighting as sport and dalliance between the sexes. Larks, for instance, have what seem, at the worst, to be delicate little mock-combats in the air, carried on in a way which suggests this. Sometimes, rising together, they keep approaching and retiring from each other, with the light, swinging motion of a
