388 Townsend, Courtship in Birds. [.July 



or bow and Red-breasted Mergansers courtesy with a swinging 

 dip of the whole body. Bowing and courtesying are as common 

 in avian as in human courtship. 



Among our birds the Gannet has perhaps the most elaborate 

 dance, one that in completeness and in many of its features sug- 

 gests the dance of the Laysan Albatross so well described by Prof. 

 W. K. Fisher. 1 It is worth while describing this dance of the 

 Gannets in detail, for, as far as I can discover, there is no descrip- 

 tion of it in any American ornithology and I have found no men- 

 tion of it in the pages of the ' Nuttall Bulletin' or ' The Auk.' Mr. 

 P. A. Taverner 2 is the only one in this country who has referred 

 to this dance as far as I know, and his description is very brief 

 and omits many of the most interesting details. He calls it "a 

 sort of conventionalized ritual." A fuller description is given 

 by Mr. J. H. Gurney 3 in his monograph on the Gannet. He says: 

 "This sort of thing can be seen, with variations, any fine day in 

 July, on the Bass Rock, but it cannot be the affection of court- 

 ship, because the courting season is passed." He ascribes it to 

 the affection of the Gannets for each other. 



The bowing and posturing and other strange antics of the Lay- 

 son Albatross is spoken of by Prof. Fisher as "a curious dance, 

 or perhaps more appropriately a cake-walk," and he goes on to 

 say: "This game or whatever one may wish to call it very likely 

 originated in past time during the courting season, but it certainly 

 has long since lost any such significance. I believe the birds 

 now practise these antics for the pure fun they derive." These 

 remarks I believe apply exactly to the dance of the Gannets. 

 I spent many hours this last summer under most favorable con- 

 ditions near the great Gannet nesting ledges on the Cliffs of Bona- 

 venture Island, P. Q., and I saw the dance repeated by hundreds 

 of pairs many times and I came to the conclusion that Prof. Fisher 

 did in the case of the Layson Albatross, namely that it was orig- 

 inally a courtship dance and that it was continued from habit 

 and from the joy of it, in the same way that the Song Sparrow 

 continues to sing long after the nuptial season. 



i Auk, XXI, 1904, pp. 8-20. 



2 The Gannets of Bonaventure Island, Ottawa Naturalist, XXXII, 1918, p. 24. 



3 The Gannet, p. 377. 



