218 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



II. 



Foi' the purposes of this paper it is necessary to include in 

 the term "courtship" all behaviour that is peculiar to the bird in 

 the spring time, and not to confine it merely to those actions that 

 are performed under the direct stimulus of the presence of the 

 female. Thus considered, the courtship of the Lapwing comes 

 under four heads, and these heads, for the sake of convenience, 

 I propose to call by the names by which they are distinguished 

 in my field notes : — 



a. The aerial tumbling. 



b. Stone picking. 



' i Hustling. 



C Si.) 



d. The display. 



(a) Can be dismissed in a few words, for, although the swoop- 

 ing and turning and the well-known call are characteristic of the 

 spring season, they have nothing to do with the courtship proper. 



(b) This also has only indirect bearing on the true courtship, 

 but having regard to what will be related presently, it has been 

 thought well to include it here. The cock bird stands some- 

 times for several minutes together picking up minute pebbles 

 and flinging them over his shoulder. Occasionally, also, dry 

 grass stems are gathered and thrown aside. The same action 

 may be observed in the female bird when uneasy, for example, 

 if she is kept for long away from her eggs, and in itself it is not 

 indicative of more than a certain amount of restlessness and 

 physical discomfort. 



(c 1) This was much the commonest action, and is what 

 Mr. Selous calls " rolling." However, I prefer this name of 

 my own coining as being more descriptive of the nature of the 

 action. The bird sank down and hustled the ground under his 

 feathers in the same way as a nesting bird who prepares to 

 cover her eggs. At such times the tail was held almost 

 vertically, and the wings were partly opened. The bird's 

 body moved up and down in rhythmical throbs. If the simile 

 that occurred to me at the time may find place here, it resembled 

 the pulsating movement of the abdomen of a wasp who cleans 

 his legs and wings after a visit to the honeypot. 



