EUROPEAN BLACKBIRD 75 



Geyr (1933) saw the male after coition assume a striking posture 

 with the head stretched very steeply, but not quite vertically, upward 

 and the tail nearly vertical. The wings were strongly drooped and 

 fluttered with a quick rhythm. Gamier (1934) observed a female on 

 a low wall surrounded by bushes, where she was joined by a male, which 

 settled on the wall singing softly, circled several times round her with 

 tail fanned and depressed, wings slightly dropped and 'ruffled back 

 feathers', no doubt meaning the erection of the rump feathers already 

 mentioned. Coition followed. Konig (1938) watched a male which 

 was being followed and solicited by a female.f§ The male had the head 

 and body feathers ruffled and the bill wide open. Suddenly he turned 

 round so that both birds were facing each other. The female's bill 

 was now wide open, but not so^wide as the male's. Both then ap- 

 proached closer and remained thus until after a brief interval coition 

 took place. Throughout a soft twittering was maintained. This 

 seems a usual accompaniment of coition and of any preliminary pos- 

 turing. It is described also by Antonius (1937), another observer who 

 has published a note on coition. In this case the female crouched with 

 quivering wings in the usual solicitation posture of passerines, but had 

 the bill directed almost vertically upward and wide open. The male 

 too had the bill wide open and seemed to fondle the female's head 

 feathers with it. Otherwise there seem to have been no special pre- 

 hminaries. A. W. Boyd (1941) has recorded coition as early as 

 February 8, after the male and female had followed each other in 

 small circles with fanned tails sweeping the ground and wings half 

 spread and depressed. 



Others have described display actions which, at any rate on the 

 occasions observed, did not lead to coition. J. M. Boraston (1905), in 

 the third week of March, saw a cock blackbird creeping up a ditch 

 bank in what he describes as a most unusual manner, with body low 

 and the fully fanned tail trailed along the ground. The head was 

 stretched forward on the stiffly extended neck, and from the slightly 

 open bill came a continuous flow of small squeakings and pipings 

 which first attracted the observer's attention. There proved to be 

 two females present, both of which regarded the male intently, paying 

 no attention to one another. "When the cock bird, facing the two 

 females, had serenaded them in this fashion for about a minute, he 

 again turned tail upon them, fanning it and trailing it as before, and 

 as he wormed along they followed him silently, appearing fascinated 

 by his wild skirling. He, stopping abruptly, and with his back still 

 turned toward them, drew himself up, flung the spread tail askew on 

 one side and jerked his head awry on the other, as if he were set on a 

 crooked wire." Unfortunately the proceedings were disturbed, as so 

 often happens in such cases, by one of the females noticing the 



