ABSENCE OF THE FEMALE 81 



the most severe struggle might readily be inter- 

 preted as a game if it were not for certain 

 symptoms which reveal its inner nature. 



The males of many other migrants can fre- 

 quently be observed to fight when there was 

 every reason to believe that females had still 

 to arrive. The Blackcap is notoriously pug- 

 nacious, but not more so than the Marsh-Warbler 

 or the Whinchat. Here in Worcestershire, the 

 Arimdo phragmites grows mainly on certain 

 sheets of water which are comparatively few 

 and far between, and the Reed- Warbler is 

 consequently restricted to isolated and more or 

 less confined areas. The males arrive early in 

 May before the new growth of reeds has 

 attained any considerable height, and each one 

 has its own position in the reed-bed, sings there, 

 and throughout the whole period of reproduction 

 actively resists intrusion on the part of other 

 males. I have kept watch upon a small area 

 of reeds daily from the date of the first arrival ; 

 each individual was known to me, and as the 

 growing reeds were only a few inches in height, 

 a female could scarcely have escaped detection. 

 Yet time and again disputes arose, and males 

 pursued and pecked one another, striving to 

 attain that isolation for which racial preparation 

 had fitted them. 



But on account of their violence, or their 

 novelty, or because the absence of a female was 

 beyond question, some battles stand out in one's 

 memory more prominently than others. An 

 instance of this was a struggle between two 



