SEXUAL SELECTION 



49 



selection. The males are usually more brilliant in plumage 

 and have more highly developed voices than the females 

 (Plates 22-27). At the mating season they parade their 

 fine plumage before the females and use all their charms 

 of voice to render themselves attractive to their desired 

 mates. They often go through the most remarkable court- 

 ing antics, and there seems to be sufficient evidence from 

 observation that these antics and the brilliant voice and fine 

 plumage influence the female in her choice, that they act 

 as a sexual excitant. The strutting of the rooster or the 

 turkey cock (Plate 27) is a good example of courting habits 

 among birds that is familiar to all (cf. also Plates 23 and 24). 

 Under the influence of the courting instinct the behavior of 

 many of our birds changes its whole character. The Ameri- 

 can woodcock is one of the most retiring birds we have. 

 Few but sportsmen have ever seen it in its native woods. 

 (See Plate 50.) By day it stays close in the thickets, feeding. 

 It rarely flies except at night. It has no calls or song. But 

 at the beginning of the breeding season even this shy bird 

 loses his sedate character and lightly turns his fancy to 

 thoughts of love. During the morning and evening twilight 

 a male and female may come day after day to the same spot 

 at the edge of the woods, where the male will go through a 

 series of performances wholly foreign to his usual quiet habit. 

 Chapman, in his Handbook of Birds of Eastern North 

 America, thus describes the courting of the woodcock: 

 " How many evenings have I tempted the malaria germs of 

 the New Jersey lowlands to watch the woodcock perform his 

 strange sky dance ! He begins on the ground, with a formal, 

 periodic peent, peent, an incongruous preparation for the wild 

 rush that follows. It is repeated several times before he 



