A Fight Begins

The fight begins in a confrontational pose. Note how little leaping the birds do, and how they scarcely raise their wings.

This is just the very beginning of a fight that lasted about twenty minutes, and soon after this there was almost no leaping; the birds were surprisingly lacking in physical stamina compared with my own; the fight was actually boring compared with those I had seen in my garden and in the wild. (Of course I gently separate my own birds when they fight, sending each back into his own territory.

Here, and this is the point: the birds have nowhere to hide and no way to escape. As the men yell and jeer, they have no choice but to fight to the death.