Male 
Downy 
kms. 
^Fmale 
for a few seconds, when the two birds fluttered about to¬ 
gether and perhaps rolled over once or twice, closely 
united. At first I thought it an amatory encounter and 
I am still almost certain that the male attempted to 
secure sexual contact with the female once or twice. But 
if so it could not have been his primary or at least sole 
object. For he continued to peck her head even when she 
was lying almost motionless on the snow. For a time she 
seemed to be trying to escape and for fully two minutes 
her cries were piteous and incessant. At length he left 
her and flew up into an elm where he clung for a moment 
or two, making what seemed to me a very unusual display of 
the red on his occiput. Then of a sudden he swooped down 
on the female, who had meanwhile been cowering in the 
middle of a cluster of lilac stems, on the snow. Dragging 
her forth from this slight bhelter into an open space, he 
attacked her again, this time with obvious fury, fairly 
raining a shower of blows on the back of her head. She 
seemed too weak to make any further attempt to escape and 
her cries, although continued, were so faint that we could 
only just hear them. I now realized for the first time 
that he was inspired by the lust of killing and not by 
sexual ardor. It was very hard to refrain from rushing 
out and driving him away but I restrained the impulse, not 
being willing to interrupt a tragedy of such extraordinary, 
