Chapter 14 - Page 2

numbers of the solitary snipe (Scolopax major) assemble during dusk in a morass; and the same place is frequented for the same purpose during successive years; here they may be seen running about "like so many rats," puffing out their feathers, flapping their wings, and uttering the strangest cries.*(2)

* Nordman describes (Bull. Soc. Imp. des Nat. Moscou, 1861, tom. xxxiv., p. 264) the balzen of Tetrao urogalloides in Amur Land. He estimated the number of birds assembled at above a hundred, not counting the females, which lie hid in the surrounding bushes. The noises uttered differ from those of T. urogallus. *(2) With respect to the assemblages of the above-named grouse, see Brehm, Thierleben, B. iv., s. 350; also L. Lloyd, Game Birds of Sweden, 1867, pp. 19, 78. Richardson, Fauna Bor. Americana: Birds, p. 362. References in regard to the assemblages of other birds have already been given. On Paradisea, see Wallace, in Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. xx., 1857, p. 412. On the snipe, Lloyd, ibid., p. 221.

Some of the above birds,- the black-cock, capercailzie, pheasant-grouse, ruff, solitary snipe, and perhaps others,- are, as is believed, polygamists. With such birds it might have been thought that the stronger males would simply have driven away the weaker, and then at once have taken possession of as many females as possible; but if it be indispensable for the male to excite or please the female, we can understand the length of the courtship and the congregation of so many individuals of both sexes at the same spot. Certain strictly monogamous species likewise hold nuptial assemblages; this seems to be the case in Scandinavia with one of the ptarmigans, and their leks last from the middle of March to the middle of May. In Australia the lyre-bird (Menura superba) forms "small round hillocks," and the M. Alberti scratches for itself shallow holes, or, as they are called by the natives, corroborying places, where it is believed both sexes assemble. The meetings of the M. superba are sometimes very large; and an account has lately been published* by a traveller, who heard in a valley beneath him, thickly covered with scrub, "a din which completely astonished" him; on crawling onwards he beheld, to his amazement, about one hundred and fifty of the magnificent lyre-cocks, "ranged in order of battle, and fighting with indescribable fury." The bowers of the bower-birds are the resort of both sexes during the breeding-season; and "here the males meet and contend with each other for the favours of the female, and here the latter assemble and coquet with the males." With two of the genera, the same bower is resorted to during many years.*(2)

* Quoted by Mr. T. W. Wood, in The Student, April, 1870, p. 125. *(2) Gould, Handbook of the Birds of Australia, vol. i., pp. 300, 308, 448, 451. On the ptarmigan, above alluded to, see Lloyd, ibid., p. 129.

The common magpie (Corvus pica, Linn.), as I have been