234 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



hops and short pauses, till just in front of the feed- 

 ing bird — a male — when she crouched down, and 

 pairing took place. It was accompanied — at least 

 I think so — by a peculiar guttural note, uttered 

 either by one or both the birds. Some time 

 afterwards I again saw this. I am not sure whether 

 it was the same pair of birds as before, but the 

 actions and relative parts played by the male and 

 female were the same. In either case the male was 

 the more indifferent of the two, and had to be 

 courted, or rather solicited, by the female — a fact 

 which I have noted in various birds, and which does 

 not appear to me to accord very well with that uni- 

 versal law of nature, as laid down by Hunter and 

 endorsed by Darwin, that the male is more eager, 

 and has stronger passions than, the female. No 

 doubt this is the rule, but the exceptions or quali- 

 fications of it do not seem to me to have received 

 sufficient attention. These woodpeckers could not 

 have been long mated — except that in my opinion 

 they mate for life — since the males were fighting 

 desperately only the day before. 



Let the fighting of male birds be ever so strong 

 evidence of their sexual desires, yet the actual solici- 

 tation of either sex by the other must, surely, be a 

 stronger one, and this, as we have just seen, is not 

 always on the side of the male. Darwin gives 

 several instances of female birds courting the male, 

 contrary to the general rule in the species to which 

 they belonged, and many more might be collected. 

 Amongst pigeons it is not an unknown thing for 

 married happiness to be disturbed by the machinations 

 of a wanton hen: the male gull is often quite 



