STOCK-DOVES, WOOD-PIGEONS, SNIPE 43 



flies up to her and begins bowing. She does not 

 respond, but walks away, and, on being followed and 

 pressed, stands and strikes at her annoyer with the 

 wings, and there is, then, a short fight between the 

 two. At the end of it, and when the bowing pigeon 

 has been driven off and is walking away, having his 

 tail, therefore, turned to the one he is leaving, this 

 one also bows, once only, but quite unmistakably. 

 The bow was directed towards her retiring adversary, 

 and also wooer, the two birds therefore standing in 

 a line." And on another occasion "A stock-dove 

 flies to another sitting on the warrens, and bows to 

 her, upon which she also bows to him. Yet his 

 addresses are not successfully urged." 



The sexes are here assumed, for the male and 

 female stock-dove do not differ sufficiently for one to 

 distinguish them at a distance through the glasses. 

 When, however, one sees a bird fly, like this, to 

 another one and begin the regular courting action, 

 one seems justified in assuming it to be a male and 

 the other a female. Both, however, bowed, and there 

 was a fight, though a short one (I have seen others 

 of longer duration), between them. It becomes, 

 therefore, a question whether the much more deter- 

 mined fights which I have witnessed are not also 

 between the male and the female stock - dove, and 

 not between two males. If so, the origin of the 

 conflict is, probably, in all such cases — as it certainly 

 has been in those which I have witnessed — the 

 desires of the male bird, to which he tries to make 

 the female submit. That she, in the very midst of 

 resisting, taken, as it would seem, "in her heart's 

 extremest hate," should yet bow to her would - be 



