shuttlecock just before it turns over to descend, and this resemblance is increased by their flying perpendicularly, or almost so, with their heads up and tails down. Indeed, they seem more to be thrown through the air than to fly. Then, in one fall, they sink together into the grass. Or they will keep mounting above and above each other to some height, and then descend in something the same way, but more sweepingly (for let no one hope to see exactly how they do it), seeming to make with their bodies the soft links of a feathered chain—or as though their own "linked sweetness" of song had been translated into matter and motion. In each case they make all the time, as convenient, little kissipecks, rather than pecks, at each other.
Again, in the case of the redshank, though I have little doubt now that the following, which was both aquatic and aerial, was a genuine combat between two males, yet often at the time, and especially in its preface and conclusion, it seemed as though the birds were of opposite sexes, and, if fighting at all, only amorously.
"Two birds are pursuing each other on the bank of the river. The water is low, and a little point of mud and shingle projects into the stream. Up and down this, from the herbage to the water's edge and back again, the birds run, one close behind the other, and each uttering a funny little piping cry—'tu-tu-oo, tu-oo, tu-oo, tu-oo.' It is one, as far as I can see, that always pursues the other, who, after a time, flies to the opposite bank. The pursuer follows, and the chase is now carried on by a series of little flights from bank to bank, sometimes straight across, sometimes slanting a little up or down the stream, whilst
