bare courts a foot or two in diameter. In action the birds present a lively scene, dashing 

 about excitedly, pausing to assume strange rigid poses, dancing about, and pecking at 

 each other. It all seems confusion, but it is rather a succession of stylized displays. 

 In the Handbook of British Birds students have characterized three main types of display : 

 (1) "An excited scuttling about with head and neck horizontal or bill inclined slightly 

 upwards with ruff expanded and wings more or less spread or fluttering." (2) "Bird 

 suddenly halts and crouches with bill touching the ground, ruff expanded, wings half 

 open, tail spread and bent down." (3) "A spasmodic shivering of feathers and 

 quivering of wings." 



The hostility between males is over the little piece of ground that each has pre- 

 empted for his own dancing. It is his territory. By display, bluff, threat, and even 

 fighting he keeps the other males off, but the displaying usually takes the place of 

 fighting, and rarely are serious injuries inflicted. 



Finally the female comes to the area to make her choice. There is no fighting then. 

 "The ruffs jounce about in excitement and then go into the rigid stance; she walks up 

 to the bird of her choice." Perhaps color, or condition, or stance has attracted her 

 fancy to one among the many vari-colored contestants. Mating takes place without 

 interruption. Apparently the females are promiscuous, for while the males usually 

 remain on their own little territory on their own display ground, females have been 

 recorded as visiting more than one display ground. 



After mating, the male and the female separate. The female, with no help from the 

 male, builds her nest of grass in a hollow in an open meadow, marsh, or tundra, in- 

 cubates her four gray to greenish, thickly marked eggs, and cares for the downy chicks, 

 which are able to follow her soon after they are hatched. 



[56] 



