CHIFF-CHAFF 
acquiring the same area. During the first week in April I have 
seen these struggles commenced at daylight and carried on 
intermittently for two or three hours. The demeanour of the 
combatants, when not actually fighting or pursuing one 
another, shows the state of excitement they are in, for their 
wines are jerked about and their song is spasmodic. When 
actually pursuing one another their flight is extremely rapid, 
the birds darting in and out of the trees and bushes, some- 
times high up in the tops, at other times low down amongst 
the brambles, and when finally they do meet, their bills click 
as they collide with one another, and they tumble about in the 
air; then, for a time, there is a pause and they retire a 
_ distance from one another. And now it is that their excite- 
ment is so apparent: it seems as if they were keeping their 
passions controlled with considerable difficulty. 
This demarcation of their territory is best seen in long, 
narrow, wooded banks, which are known to be inhabited by 
different males; here the boundaries can be watched with 
greater ease. In some cases it 1s almost possible to draw an 
imaginary line, across which neither male, whose territories 
are adjoining, will trespass; in other cases there is a small 
intervening space between two territories, which again is not 
hunted by either male. 
But in every case I have found these boundaries adhered 
to with the most amazing precision. Hach male also appears 
to have some suitable position in his territory—a dead tree or 
perhaps some prominent larch—which he uses as his head- 
quarters, and from which he makes little excursions into the 
different parts of his territory, always, however, returning 
sooner or later to this central position. He is therefore 
sometimes at one end of his territory, sometimes at the other, 
feeding as he travels amongst the bushes and branches of the 
different trees, at one moment in the tops of the highest, then 
low down amongst the brambles, and again on the ground, 
along which he moves by a succession of bounds. 
Now it frequently happens that two males on adjoining 
9 
