810 
BIRD-LIFE. 
man. If one wishes to become a spectator it must be 
done at a distance with the aid of a glass, for the birds 
will not allow anyone to approach nearer than from a 
hundred to a hundred and fifty yards of their tilting- 
ground. Their love of fighting is in no way extinguished 
by confinement. They become sooner accustomed to cap¬ 
tivity, whether in a cage or a room, than any other bird. 
“Just caught,” says Naumann; “carried for miles in a 
net or a handkerchief, place the bird in a room, and in the 
first hour it will begin to make itself at home ; and if there 
chance to be another Ruff there, the two will immediately 
commence fighting before they touch their food.” They 
seem at once to be agreed upon a fixed boundary line, 
and the act of overstepping it is looked upon as a 
challenge, which is instantly accepted. In those cases 
which have come under my own personal observation, I 
have remarked that these birds fight for any reason, or 
no reason,—for the roosting place, for food, for a fly, &c., 
—without apparently any cause or definite object. That 
this lust for strife is in some way connected with the 
passion with which the bird’s breast is animated during 
the breeding season, there can be no doubt, for at any 
other time of the year the bitterest enemies become the 
best of friends. 
Naumann kept Ruffs and Reeves in a room for over 
two years : they soon became tame, and fed the first day 
of their captivity. During the whole of the migratory 
season they always kept awake and lively the whole 
night long. It was most interesting to watch them 
closely while moulting, at which season the changes in 
plumage are great. The result of these observations 
established the fact that each bird assumed, regularly, 
exactly the same plumage which it had borne the 
