68 SEXUAL SELECTION : BIRDS. Part XL 



" hot from the animal, so does his ear prefer his equally 

 " coarse and discordant music to all other." 



Love-Antics and Dances. — The curious love-gestures 

 of various birds, especially of the Gallinacese, have 

 already been incidentally noticed ; so that little need 

 here be added. In Northern America, large numbers 

 of a grouse, the Tetrao loliasianelluSy meet every morning 

 during the breeding-season on a selected level spot, 

 and here they run round and round in a circle of about 

 fifteen or twenty feet in diameter, so that the ground 

 is worn quite bare, like a fiiiry-ring. In these Par- 

 tridge-dances, as they are called by the hunters, the 

 birds assume the strangest attitudes, and run round, some 

 to the left and some to the right. Audubon describes 

 the males of a heron {Ardea herodias) as walking 

 about on their long legs with great dignity before 

 the females, bidding defiance to their rivals. With 

 one of the disgusting carrion-vultures (Catharfes 

 jota) the same naturalist states that " the gesticulations 

 " and parade of the males at the beginning of the 

 " love-season are extremely ludicrous." Certain birds 

 perform their love-antics on the wing, as we have seen 

 with the black African weaver, instead of on the 

 ground. During the spring our little white-throat 

 {Sijlvia cinerea) often rises a few feet or yards in the 

 air above some bush, and " flutters with a fitful and 

 ' fantastic motion, singing all the while, and then drops 

 * to its perch." The great English bustard throws 

 himself into indescribably odd attitudes whilst courting 

 the female, as has been figured by Wolf. An allied 

 Indian bustard {Otis hengalensis) at such times "rises 

 " perpendicularly into the air with a hurried flapping 

 *' of his wings, raising his crest and puffing out the 

 '* feathers of his neck and breast, and then drops to the 



