The willows are humming with bees; the raucous calls of the peacocks echo around the
Valley in the stillness before sunrise and after sunset; and the blackbirds are once
again involved in their border wars; spring is here.
Every morning
now for the last two or three weeks a couple of cock, magnificently black,
blackbirds have been busy trying to define the boundaries of their territories.
The border of their territories is somewhere around a Taiwan cherry tree,
growing by the railed fence around the garden. Every morning they are there,
stalking each other along the railing, tails spread out like fans and heads
raised up aggressively as they dash back and forwards, encroaching on each
other’s space. One of the birds then descends to the ground and there
they start all over again, rushing at each, dodging around the bushes,
kicking over the leaves and then scurrying off, until it all gets a bit
much for them and they fly up breast to breast and beak to beak, trying
to deliver the coup de grace. However, it is all very ritualistic,
very much like a game. One would wish that all territorial
struggles were so amicable.
It was not until the 1920s that Eliot Howard,
an obscure English bird watcher, introduced the word territory to zoology and
challenged the time honoured notion that the male has little on his mind but females.
Classical biology, from Darwin down, saw natural selection in terms of male
competition for the female. Eliot Howard observed throughout a lifetime of
bird watching that cocks seldom quarrel over hens; what they quarrel over is
real estate and status. With infinite detail and patience, he observed the pattern
of bird competition which he published in a booked called Territory in Bird Life.
A superb naturalist, Eliot Howard studied species after species, migratory birds
and resident birds, land birds and sea birds and always there was the same conclusion,
that a cock who has acquired territory will have small problems in gaining or holding
a mate. The cock seizes a territory, defines his boundaries by the pugnacity of his
individual nature and warns off all others by his song. On this territory will he mate
and breed but the seizure and struggle take place before the coming of the hen and
without consciousness of sexual significance.
By marking out an area of land and
defending it against cocks of its own species, a bird can gain monopoly access to food,
nesting material and nest sites. A system of territory holding means that birds are
dispersed more widely in suitable habitats than if the population is crowded in without
restraint. It is within territory that social order is developed and defined. It is a
survival mechanism which has evolved to reduce competition for resources. As an evolutionary
strategy, a bird able to hold a territory is better able to pass on his genes.
Most
territorial species have a definite code of conduct with the territory owner showing aggression
within its own defended territory and fleeing when it is discovered trespassing in another
bird’s territory. Rival birds seldom resort to physical combat - the risk of real injury
to both is too great to make this a practical way of settling a dispute. Instead they have
evolved patterns of behaviour which achieve results without exposing them to danger. Their
territorial songs, like their elaborate threat displays, are battles of nerves, each bird
working out the tension built up by two conflicting impulses - the impulse to fight and the
impulse to flight.
Fights are usually brief and bloodless. Among the exceptions are
the spectacular battles between two mute swan cobs. The birds fight breast to breast in the
water, necks intertwined, beating each other with their powerful wings. These battles may
last until the both birds are exhausted although their ultimate object is to push the rivals
head under water to enforce submission and retreat.
Most birds hold territory for the
breeding season only but some birds such as well established pairs of blackbirds may stay
in their breeding territory over winter. There are the odd species where the female chooses
the territory and attracts a mate.
It is not just birds which have a passion for a place
of their own. After Eliot Howard’s book, naturalists began to follow his lead of studying the
behaviour of animals in their natural environment in the wild rather than in zoos. Naturalists
such as Konrad Lorenz and Eugene Marais went further than studying just territory, although
territory goes a long way towards defining social relationships, and looked at animal society
in general, studies which included hominoids or primates. Edward O. Wilson first coined the term
sociobiology, a term which has come to cover the whole spectrum of biological investigations
between organisms, in pairs, groups, herds, colonies and nations. Sociobiologists study the
relations among termites in a mound, cuckoo hatchlings and their duped adoptive parents, the
members of matriarchal groups of elephants, bands of monkeys, elephant-seal bulls and their
harems and human couples, families, tribes and nations.
These studies have become of enormous
importance in helping us to understand our place in the scheme of things, to comprehending our
biological inheritance. Let us hope these studies will lead us to better appreciate that we
are sharing this planet, this territory, with a host of other species and that we have no right
to crowd them out, to deprive them of their ecological niche, a place of their own.
Waiotahi Valley, Opotiki, 1998.
