COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 265 



position. Black ducks, baldpates, buffle-hcads 

 and others make short springs and flights from the 

 water; mallards, scaups and pintails bob 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 suggests the dance of 

 the Layson albatross so well described by Pro- 

 fessor W. K. Fisher. ^ It is worth while describ- 

 ing this dance of the gannets in detail, for, as far 

 as I can discover, there is no description of it in 

 any American ornithology and I have found no 

 mention of it in the pages of the "Nuttall Bulle- 

 tin" or 'The Auk." Mr. P. A. Taverner " 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 de- 

 tails. He appropriately calls it ''a sort of con- 

 ventionalized ritual." A fuller description is 



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



2 The Gannets of Bonaventure Island, Ottawa Naturalist, 

 XXXII, 1918, p. 24. 



