98 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 223 



tuary. "The male has displayed before all three hens, and I have 

 seen him mating with all of them. Moreover, when I have known 

 that a female has gone to the nest of an Estrilda to lay, the male has 

 mated with one of the remaining hens." This case will be discussed 

 more fully in the following section on territorial and mating behavior. 

 When going through the dancing flight, the male bird makes a 

 twittering tseet noise that seems quite forceful and vigorous close 

 up but does not carry very far. This note seems to be synchronized 

 to the beat of the wings. 



Territorial Behavior and Mating 



In the discussion of courtship behavior, I quoted V. G. L. van 

 Someren's discussion of the onset of the reproductive cycle and the 

 break-up of winter flocks. This onset is, of course, intimately related 

 to the expression of territoriality in the pintail. No one has yet made 

 a real study of the territorial behavior of the pintail, but the following 

 data give us something to go by for the present. 



On November 24, at Woodbush, Transvaal, I saw an adult male in 

 full breeding plumage. He was perched on a bush in an open gi'assy 

 field, and as I approached, he flew off to a nearby bush and then to 

 another not far off as I came close again. He made a smaU circling 

 flight and came back to the original bush. On and off during the rest 

 of the day, each time that ] visited the spot I found by repeated trials 

 that he could not be induced to leave. He had apparently established 

 his territory there. Apparently the bush in which he was first found 

 was his singing perch. The next day I spent a couple hours watching 

 and tried to make him fly off, but he would not go more than about 100 

 feet and would then circle back gi-aduaUy. There was only one henUke 

 bird in the immediate vicinity. I shot the male and found the testes 

 were much enlarged. The plumage was still very fresh. In fact 

 the long central retrices still retained a little of the sheaths basally, 

 and one of them was so loose that it came out when I skinned the bird. 



In the same region I watched two other males that also seemed to 

 have estabUshed their individual territories. I watched one of them 

 for three successive days, and he was apparently without a mate as yet. 

 He had a territory about 400 yards in diameter, considerably larger 

 than that of the first male, but more open, less bushy, and probably 

 contained possibilities of no greater number of nests to parasitize than 

 the other. The other male had a smaUer breeding area and was usu- 

 ally accompanied by three or four brownish hen like birds. I shot 

 one of these birds and found it to be a male — a year-old bird in first 

 nuptial plumage. 



Several observers have reported territorial fighting between males. 

 At Tshibati, Belgian Congo, on December 9, 1956, Collias (in litt.) 



