Birds by Land and Sea 



At the spot indicated, I had the opportunity of 

 witnessing the courting difficulties of a quartet of 

 pied wagtails on the saltings immediately below me. 

 This quartet, however, lacked all the elements of 

 harmony, the performers being three females and 

 one male, and the piece to be performed the old 

 tune for two voices, male and female, with mutually 

 agreeable variations. The variations in the present 

 instance appeared to be universally disagreeable. 

 There is no stage-craft to equal nature. Here the 

 actors do what they desire to do, and not what they 

 have been taught to think is the proper thing to be 

 done. This gay Lothario of a cock perched on one 

 piece of rock after another, and allowed himself to 

 be adored by the contending females, displaying now 

 and again a weak preference by pecking first at one 

 and then at another of them. There is no bar to 

 female initiative in the courtship of birds, and the 

 three hens followed him about, and paid slavish 

 homage, each perching as near to him as the two 

 others would allow without open violence. And 

 those tails ! how they wagged ! now with an ecstatic 

 quiver as the hen-haunted cock bestowed some little 

 attention upon their owners, now with quickening 

 vibration and widening sweep ere one swooped at 

 her rival, and heads and tails were lost for a time in 

 the general scuffle. In the end, I felt sorrier for 

 that cock, coxcomb though he seemed to be, than 

 for the hens ; and he remains in my memory a 

 pathetic figure disappearing down shore pursued by 



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