Bird Life Glimpses

by Edmund Selous

What is the meaning of this strange performance? The cock bird, say the handbooks, is displaying before the hen. But where is the hen? In nine cases out of ten she is not there; and this, and, still more, the peculiarity of the actions, have convinced me that a wish to please is not the real motive of them. Again, it is assumed that the cock bird, only, rolls in this way. But is this the case? Some further observations, as recorded by me in my field notes, may serve to answer this question. “Two peewits have just paired.” I noticed no prior antics, but, immediately after coition, one of the two—I am not quick enough with the glasses to say which—runs a little way over the sand, and commences to roll. In a moment or two, the other runs up, looking most interested, and, on the first one’s rising and standing aside, immediately sits along, in the exact spot where it was, and in the same sort of attitude, though without rolling. Then this bird rises also, and both stand looking at the place where they have just lain, and making little pecks at it—or just beside it—with their bills. One of the two then walks a little away, so that I lose her, whilst the other one, on which I keep the glasses, and which I now feel sure is the male, rolls, again, in the same place, and in the most marked manner. Then, rising, he runs, for some way, with very short precise little steps, which have a peculiar character about them. His whole pose and attitude is, also, peculiar. The head and beak are pointed straight forward, in a line with the neck, which is stretched straight out, to its fullest extent, the crest lying flat down upon it. In this strange, set attitude, and with these funny little set, formal steps, he advances, without a pause, for some dozen or twenty yards, then stops, resumes his ordinary demeanour, and, shortly, flies off. In a little while the same thing occurs again, and, though still not quick enough with the glasses to be quite certain which bird it is that leads the way, immediately after the nuptial rite has been accomplished, I yet think it is the male; and he rolls now in two different places, making a run to some distance, in the way described, after the first time of doing so. It is only on the second occasion that the other bird runs up to him. The actions of the two are, then, as before, except that the last comer—the female, as I think—rolls this time, slightly, also. It is in a very imperfect and, as one may say, rudimentary manner, but I catch the characteristic, though subdued, motion with the tail.

My glass is now upon a peewit standing negligently on the warrens, when another one, entering its field, flies right down upon and pairs with this bird, without having previously alighted on the ground. Immediately afterwards he (the male) makes his funny little run forward, starting from by the side of the female, and, at the end of it, pitches forward and commences to roll. The female, shortly, comes up to him, with the same interested manner as on the other occasions, and, on his moving his length forward, and sinking down again, she sits in the spot where he has just rolled, pecking on the ground, as before described, whilst he rolls, again, just in front of her. The two birds then rise, and stand together, making little desultory pecks. After a while the hen walks away, leaving the cock, who rolls a little more before following her. A strange performance this rolling is, when seen quite plainly through the glasses. The whole body is lifted up, so that the bird often looks not so much sitting as standing on his breast, the rest of him being in the air. The breast is, thus, pressed into the sand, whilst a rolling or side-to-side movement of it, varying in force, helps to make a cup-shaped hollow. This curious raised attitude, however, alternates with a more ordinary sitting posture, nor is the rolling motion always apparent. After each raising of the wings and tail, they are depressed, then again raised, and so on, whilst, at intervals, there is the curious waggle of the tail, before described, suggesting actual copulation.

In none of the above instances did I walk to examine the place where the birds had rolled after they had left them. They would, indeed, have been difficult to find, but upon another occasion, when the circumstances made this easy, I did so, and found just such a little round basin in the sand as the eggs are laid in. No eggs, however, were ever laid here, whilst the bird was afterwards to be seen rolling in other parts. It is easy, under such circumstances, to keep one peewit—or at least one pair of them—distinct from others, for they appropriate a little territory to themselves, which they come back to and stand about in, however much they may fly abroad. And here the birds return, in my experience, spring-time after spring-time, to lay their eggs, so that I judge them to pair for life. It is well known that the peewit does produce hollows in the way described—as, indeed, he could hardly avoid doing—and as he is constantly rolling in various places numbers of such little empty cups are to be found about the bird’s breeding haunts. Mr. Howard Saunders, in his “Manual of British Birds,” says, alluding to the spring-tide activities of the peewit, “The ‘false nests’ often found are scraped out by the cock in turning round, when showing off to the female.” I have shown what the bird’s movements on these occasions really are. They have upon them, in my opinion, the plain stamp of the primary sexual impulse, and it is out of this that anything which can be looked upon as in the nature of a conscious display must have grown. There is, indeed, evidence to show that one bird performing these actions may be of interest to another, but in spite of this and of the bright colour of the under tail-coverts (which I have seen apparently examined, even touched, by one peewit, whilst another, their owner, was rolling), it may be said that, in the greater number of cases, the performing bird is paid no attention to, and does not, itself, appear to wish to be, being often, to all intents and purposes, alone. What relation, then, do such actions, which are not confined to the peewit, bear to the more pronounced and undoubted cases of sexual display? They are, I believe, the raw material out of which these latter have arisen—sometimes, at least, if not always. I have, also, shown that it is not the male peewit, only, that rolls. As usual, it has been assumed that this is so, because here, as in other cases, it is impossible, in field observation, to distinguish the one sex from the other, and to assume is a much easier process than to find out. Immediately after coition, however, one has both the male and the female bird before one, and under these circumstances I have seen them both act in the same way, as just described. It is true that the actions of the female were less pronounced than those of the male, but it does not follow that this is always the case, and, moreover, it is of no great importance if it is. The essential fact is that both the sexes go through the same movements, and, therefore, if these movements are, as I believe them to be, the basis of sexual display, one can see why, in some cases, there might be an inter-sexual display, and, as a consequence, an inter-sexual selection. But I leave this question, which has been profoundly neglected, to come to another. In the passage I have quoted, the term “false nest” is put in inverted commas, showing, I suppose, that it has often been used, and, consequently, that the close resemblance of the false nest to the real one has been generally recognised. I suggest that the false nest is the real one—by which I mean that there is no essential difference in the process by which each is produced; and, further, that the origin of nest-building generally, amongst birds, has been the excited nervous actions to which the warmth of the sexual feelings give rise, and the activity of the generative organs.

My theory is based upon two assumptions, neither of which, I think, is in itself improbable. The first of these assumptions is that birds, in early times, made no nests, and the second that the eggs were originally laid upon the ground only. Assuming this, and that these ancient birds, like many modern ones, gave themselves up, during the breeding time, to all sorts of strange, frenzied movements over the ground, I suppose the eggs to have been laid in some place which had been the scene of such movements. For, by a natural tendency, birds, like other animals, get to connect a certain act with a certain place, or with certain places. Thus they are wont to roost in the same tree, and often on the same bough of it, to bathe in the same pool or bend of the stream, &c. &c. In accordance with this disposition, their antics, or love-frenzies, would have tended to become localised also; the places where they had been most frequently indulged in would have called up, by association, the nuptial feelings, and, consequently, the eggs would have been more likely to have been laid in such places than in other ones having no special significance. Like every other act that is often repeated, this one of laying in a certain spot would have passed into a habit, and thus the place of mutual dalliance—perhaps of pairing, also—would have become the place of laying, therefore the potential nest. Having got thus far, let us now suppose that one chief form of these frenzied movements, which I suppose to have been indulged in by both sexes, was a rolling, buzzing, or spinning round upon the ground, by which means the bird so acting produced, like the peewit, a greater or lesser depression in it. If the eggs were laid in the depression so formed, they would then have been laid in a nest, but such nest would not have been made with any idea of receiving the eggs, or sheltering the young. Its existence would have been due to excited and non-purposive movements, springing out of the violence of the sexual emotions. Now, however, comes a further stage, which, it might well be thought, could only have grown out of deliberate and intelligent action—I mean at every slight step in the process—on the part of the bird. I allude to the lining of grass, moss, sticks, or even stones or fragments of shells, with which many birds that lay their eggs in a hollow, made by them in the ground, further improve this. That the nature and object of this process is now, through memory, more or less understood by many birds, I, for one, do not doubt; but, as every evolutionist will admit, it is the beginnings of anything, which best explain, and are most fraught with significance. Is it possible that even the actual building of the nest may have had a nervous—a frenzied—origin? Lions and other fierce carnivorous animals will, when wounded, bite at sticks, or anything else lying within their reach. That a bird, as accustomed to peck as a dog or a lion is to bite, should, whilst in a state of the most intense nervous excitement, do the same, does not appear to me to be more strange, or, indeed, in any way peculiar; and that such a trick would be inherited, and, if beneficial, increased and modified, who that has Darwin in his soul can doubt? Now if a bird, whilst ecstatically rolling on the ground, were to pick up and throw aside either small sticks or any other loose-lying and easily-seized objects—such as bits of grass or fibrous roots—I can see no reason why it should not, by stretching out its neck to such as lay just within its reach, and dropping them, again, when in an easier attitude, make a sort of collection of them close about it—of which, indeed, I will quote an instance farther on. Then if the eggs were laid where the bird had rolled, they would be laid in the midst of such a collection.

Now, I submit that these curious actions of the peewit, during the breeding time, support the theory of the origin of nest-building, which I have here roughly sketched, if not entirely, at least to a certain extent. They point in that direction. Here we have movements, on the part of both the male and female bird, which are, obviously, of a sexual character, having upon them, I would say, the plain stamp of the primary sexual instinct. They are most marked—or, at any rate, most elaborate—immediately after the actual pairing, commencing, then, in the curious little run and set attitude of the male. Out of, and as a result of, these movements, a depression in the ground, greatly resembling—if not, as I believe, identical with—that in which the eggs are laid, is evolved, and in or about this is shown a tendency to collect sticks, grass, or other loose substances. But how different are these collecting movements to those which we see in a bird whose nest-building instinct has become more highly developed! They seem to be but just emerging from the region of blind forces, to be only half-designed, not yet fully guided by a distinct idea of doing something for a definite end. Yet it is just these actions that most resemble those which seem so purposive, in the ordinary building of a nest. All the others seem to me to belong to that large and important class of avine movements, which may be called the sexually ecstatic, or love-mad, group. Nor can these two classes of actions be separated from each other. The motion by which the hollow is produced is accompanied by—if it may not rather be said to be a part of—that most pronounced, peculiar, and, as it seems to me, purely sexual one of the tail, or rather of the anal parts; and there is, moreover, the very marked and distinctive run, with the set, rigid attitude—that salient feature of a bird’s nuptial antics—which immediately precedes the rolling, in the same way that the run precedes the jump in athletics. All this set of actions must be looked upon as so many parts of one and the same whole thing, and to explain such whole thing we must call in some cause which will equally account for all its parts. The deliberate intention of making a nest will not do this, for many of the actions noted do not in the least further such a plan. On the other hand, sexual excitement may just as well produce rolling on the ground—as, indeed, it does in some other birds—and, perhaps, even pecking round about on it, as it may the stiff, set run, and those other peculiar movements. And if some of many movements, the cause of all of which is sexual excitement, should be of such a nature as that, out of them, good might accrue to the species, why should not natural selection seize hold of these, and gradually shape them, making them, at last, through the individual memory, intelligent and purposive? since, by becoming so, their ability might be largely increased, and their improvement proceed at a quicker rate. I believe that in these actions of the peewit, which sometimes appear to me to stand in the place of copulation, and at other times commence immediately after it, with a peculiar run, and then go on, without pause or break, to other motions, all of which—even the curious pecking which I have noticed—have, more or less, the stamp of sexual excitement upon them, though some may, in their effects, be serviceable—I believe, I say, that in all these actions we see this process actually at work; and I believe, also, that in the nest-building of species comparatively advanced in the art, we may still see traces of its early sexual origin. I have been, for instance, extremely struck with the movements of a hen blackbird upon the nest that she was in course of constructing. These appeared to me to partake largely of an ecstatic—one might almost say a beatific—nature, so that there was a large margin of energy, over and above the actual business of building—at least it struck me so—to be accounted for. I was not in the least expecting to see this, and I well remember how it surprised and struck me. The wings of this blackbird were half spread out, and would, I think, have drooped—an action most characteristic of sexual excitement in birds—had not the edge of the nest supported them, and I particularly noted the spasmodic manner in which the tail was, from time to time, suddenly bent down. It is true that it then tightly clasped—as one may almost call it—the rim of the nest, pressing hard against it on the outer side. But though such action may now have become part of a shaping process, yet it was impossible for me, when I saw it, not to think of the peewit, in which something markedly similar could have answered no purpose of this kind. Were the latter bird, instead of rolling on the ground, to do so in a properly constructed nest, of a size suitable to its bulk, the tail, being bent forcibly down in the way I have described, would compress the rim of it, just as did that of the blackbird. And were the blackbird to do what I have seen it do, on the bare ground, and side by side with the peewit, a curious parallel would, I think, be exhibited. As far as I have been able to see, the actions of rooks on the nest are very similar to those of the blackbird, and a black Australian swan, that I watched in the Pittville Gardens at Cheltenham, went through movements, upon the great heap of leaves flung down for it, which much resembled those of the peewit upon the ground. By what I understand from the swan-keeper at Abbotsbury, the male of the mute swan acts in much the same way. Of course what is wanted is extended observation of the way in which birds build their nests—that is to say, of their intimate actions when on them, either placing the materials or shaping the structure. If the origin of the habit has been as I imagine, one might expect, here, to see traces of it, in movements more or less resembling those to which I have drawn attention.

I have noticed the curious way in which both the male and female peewit—after movements which appear to me to differ considerably from the more characteristic love-antics of birds in general—peck about at bits of grass, or any other such object growing or lying within their reach; and I have speculated on the possibility of actions like these, though at first of a nervous and merely mechanical character, having grown, at last, into the deliberate and intentional building of a nest. Whether, in the case of the peewit, we see quite the first stage of the process, I will not be certain; but we see it, I believe, in another of our common British birds, viz. the wheat-ear. My notes on the extraordinary behaviour of two males of this bird, whilst courting the female, I have published in my work, “Bird Watching,”[21] from which I will now quote a few lines bearing upon this point: “Instead of fighting, however, which both the champions seem to be chary of, one of them again runs into a hollow, this time a very shallow one, but in a manner slightly different. He now hardly rises from the ground, over which he seems more to spin, in a strange sort of way, than to fly; to buzz, as it were, in a confined area, and with a tendency to go round and round. Having done this a little, he runs from the hollow, plucks a few little bits of grass, returns with them into it, drops them there, comes out again, hops about as before, flies up into the air, descends, and again dances about.” Now, here, a bird brings to a certain spot, not unlike such a one as the nest is usually built in—approaching it, at any rate—some of the actual materials of which the nest is composed, and I ask if, under the circumstances, it can possibly be imagined that such bird really is building its nest, in the ordinary purpose-implying sense of the term. As well might one suppose—so it seems to me—that a man, in the pauses of a fierce sword-and-dagger fight with a rival suitor, should set seriously to work house-hunting or furniture-buying. These wheat-ears, I should mention, had been following each other about, for the greater part of the afternoon, and though, as hinted, not exactly fire-eaters, had yet several times closed in fierce conflict. The manner in which the grass was plucked by one of them, partook of the frenzied character of their whole conduct. How difficult, therefore, to suppose that here, all at once, was a deliberate act, having to do with the building of a nest, before, apparently, either of the two rivals had been definitely chosen by the hen bird! Yet, when once the object had been seized, associations may have been aroused by it.

Facts of this kind appear to me to prove, at least, the possibility of a process so elaborate, and, seemingly, so purposive as that of building a nest, having commenced in mere mechanical, unintelligent actions. As further evidence of this, and also of the passing of such actions into a further stage—that of actual construction, more or less combined with intelligence—I will now quote from an interesting account, by Mr. Cronwright Schreiner, of the habits of the ostrich, as farmed in South Africa, which was published in the Zoologist for March 1897, but which I had not read at the time these ideas first occurred to me:—

“The Nest Made by the Pair Together.—The cock goes down on to his breast, scraping or kicking the sand out, backwards, with his feet.... The hen stands by, often fluttering and clicking her wings, and helps by picking up the sand, with her beak, and dropping it, irregularly, near the edge of the growing depression.” (Compare the actions, as I have noted them, of both the male and female peewit.)

“The Little Embankment Round the Nest.—The sitting bird, whilst on the nest, sometimes pecks the sand up, with its beak, nearly as far from the nest as it can reach, and drops it around the body. A little embankment is thus, gradually, formed.... The formation ... is aided by a peculiar habit of the birds. When the bird on the nest is much excited (as by the approach of other birds, or people) it snaps up the sand, spasmodically, without rising from the nest, and without lifting its head more than a few inches from the ground. The bank is raised by such sand as falls inward. The original nest is, merely, a shallow depression.”

Remarks follow on the use of the bank, which has become a part—and an important part—of the nest. We, however, are concerned with the origin both of it and the depression. It seems clear, from the account, that the former is made, in part at least, without the bird having the intention of doing so; whilst, to make the latter, the cock assumes the attitude of sexual frenzy (described in the same paper, and often witnessed by myself), an attitude which does not seem necessary for mere scratching, nor, indeed, adapted for it. Why should a bird, possessing such tremendous power in its legs—moving them so freely, and accustomed to kick and stamp with them—have to sink upon its breast in order to scratch a shallow depression? Surely, considering their length, they could be much less conveniently used, for such a purpose, in this position, than if the bird stood up. If the scratching, however, has grown out of the sexual frenzy, we can, then, well understand the characteristic posture of the latter being continued. I suspect, myself, that the breast of the bird still helps to make the depression, as in courtship it must almost necessarily do—for the ostrich rolls, on such occasions, in much the same way as the peewit.