Watching birds

Le cantonnement des mâles is the moment each male settles on a territory and begins to hold it, and the noun behind it is one that English has to render three different ways. It rests on le canton, a bounded piece of country — the administrative division inside a French département, and the member state of Switzerland. From that comes cantonner: to put somebody inside a marked-off patch and keep him there. In the army that is billeting. Cantonner un régiment dans un village is to quarter troops on it, and le cantonnement is the quarters themselves. Turned on the speaker, the same verb becomes a figure of speech: se cantonner dans son rôle is to stick to one’s brief and go no further, and il se cantonne aux oiseaux d’eau describes somebody who looks at nothing but wildfowl. And here it is the bird, doing literally what the other two do by image. English owns « cantonment », but only in old military prose, so in practice it must reach for « billet », « confine oneself to » and « take up territory » in turn.