WHITETHROATS, BLACKCAP, GARDEN-WARBLER 83 



anger and jealousy at the approach of a hated rival, or when some 

 ancestral claim to territory is disputed ! Those two great causes 

 which have set all creation ablaze from time immemorial the Eternal 

 Feminine and the Rights of Property will rouse the nerves and highly 

 strung temperament of any bird to a perfect frenzy of excitement. 

 They may have been close comrades, and undertaken a long and 

 perilous journey together for the males of these four species arrive 

 before the females but the first appearance of the latter means 

 discord! Even female whitethroats will fight together for their 

 territory. 1 They are all jealous of their breeding-areas, though per- 

 haps the lesser-whitethroat is the least pugnacious, because more 

 sparingly distributed. But in a certain district which I know well, 

 where garden-warblers and lesser-whitethroats are both numerous 

 and their breeding areas circumscribed, males of either species fight 

 desperately, both amongst themselves and with each other. Here we 

 come face to face with one of the great problems of bird life. Take 

 any given area and watch it carefully year by year. The actual num- 

 ber of breeding birds in that locality varies little. Some of them will 

 rear two or, in the case of swallows, three broods a season, yet their 

 numbers are not increased the following year. From personal observa- 

 tion I doubt if more than a very small percentage of the young birds 

 of any species actually reaches maturity. Their natural foes are legion, 

 apart from man. This wastefulness of nature is simply appalling. If 

 we consider the restlessness and anxiety which go to make up any bird's 

 ordinary existence, surely when stripped of glamour and romance, it 

 is the most strenuous of lives, and as a result of all this immense 

 reproductive energy, the average only is maintained. 



Difficult as it may be to distinguish between the songs of these 

 four warblers, some of the slight variations in the call-notes produced 

 by each are even more perplexing. These, however, may be mastered 

 after a while ; but the infinite variety of sounds produced, and the ex- 

 quisite modulation that a bird's voice is capable of during the breeding 



1 British Warblers. E. Howard : " Whitethroat," p. 9. 

 VOL. II. E 



