*'PAP WITH A HATCHET" 123 



he is, certainly, a fighter. A cock pheasant that 

 approaches too near to one is attacked, and put to 

 flight by it. The rush of this bird along the ground, 

 with neck outstretched, legs bent, and crouching 

 gait — a sort of stealthy speed — is a formidable affair, 

 and seems half to frighten and half to perplex the 

 pheasant. But what a difference to when rival male 

 stone-curlews advance against each other to the 

 attack ! Then the carriage is upright — grotesquely 

 so, almost — and the tail fanned out like a scallop- 

 shell, which, now, it is not. This is interesting, I 

 think, for in attacking birds of another species there 

 would not be so much, if any, idea of rivalry, calling 

 up, by association, other sexual feelings, with their 

 appropriate actions. The combats of rival male 

 birds seem, often, encumbered, rather than anything 

 else, by posturings and attitudinisings, which do 

 not add to the kind of efficiency now wanted, but, 

 on the other hand, show the bird off to the best 

 advantage — e.g. the beautiful spread of the tail, and 

 the bow, as with the stock-dove, where both are 

 combined and make a marked feature of the 

 fiercest fights. All these, in my view, are, properly, 

 displays to the female, which have been imported, 

 by association of ideas, into the combats of the birds 

 practising them. But in this attack on the pheasant 

 there is nothing of all this, and the action seems, at 

 once, less showy and more pertinent. After routing 

 the pheasant, this same stone-curlew runs a plusieurs 

 reprises at some mistle-thrushes, who, each time, fly 

 away, and come down a little farther on. Eyi 

 revanche a mistle-thrush attacks a peewit, actually 

 putting it to flight. It then advances three or four 



