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 (3. Quoted by Mr. T.W. Wood, in
the Student, April 1870, p. 125.) 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. (4. Gould, Handbook to 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 informed by the
Rev. W. Darwin Fox, used to assemble from all parts of Delamere Forest,
in order to celebrate the great magpie marriage. Some years ago these
birds abounded in extraordinary numbers, so that a gamekeeper killed in
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