Spring is in the air, and it’s that time — the birds and the bees. You may be seeing some of your local birdy neighbors getting a little frisky these days …. I sure have.
Reproduction is much too huge a topic for one Dawn Chorus, but what about the early stages — courting? Some of the most spectacular behavior among birds is during this high stakes time: finding the right mate is crucial in the success of breeding, arguably the focus of a bird’s year.
For many birds, showing off their superior qualities and attracting a mate is carried out through song. There are other forms of courting too.
The National Wildlife Foundation summarizes bird courting behavior types:
Singing: This ritual is by far the most noticeable behavior exhibited by birds come spring. The intricacy and variety of song shows a potential mate the degree of maturity and intelligence. Males will often be seen singing to attract the attention of a female.
Displays or Dancing: Physical movements and dancing such as wing flaps and head dips are used to attract attention. In some species only the males will perform and the females will observe.
Touching and Preening: While most bird species preen their feathers several times a day to keep them healthy, preening can also be used in courtship. Mutual preening or allopreening is used in courtship to bond mating pairs. You also may notice your backyard birds simply perched closely next to each other, perhaps leaning somewhat on their mate.
Feeding: Males will sometimes be seen offering potential mates food in order to show that they can provide for a family. Some birds can even be seen placing food inside their mate’s mouth. This is thought to prove to the mate that they can directly feed nestlings.
Building: In some species the construction and decoration of nests with pebbles, moss and flowers can also be seen during courtship rituals in order to attract the eye of a potential mate.
- blog.nwf.org/…
We’re all hearing birdsong everywhere right now, however for me it’s mostly hidden in the trees. I’m starting to lose my hearing in the upper ranges too — not as bad as some, but as we get older listening for bird song becomes more challenging.
So I’m drawn to those birds who display their qualities visually. Luckily that’s common among aquatic birds, and I live near the sea. Unluckily, many of my aquatic birds are migratory and hold off on courting displays until they’re back on their breeding grounds up north. So I miss a lot of it, like the spectacular grebe dances.
But sometimes I catch the visual displays. Here’s a selection of a few of my local birds, with accompanying description of their typical maneuvers from Birds of North America and other sites.
There’s a wide variety of courtship behavior across the birdy world, and I’m hoping to hear about more examples from others of you Dawn Chorusters.
Red-breasted Mergansers
These Mergansers mostly display on their breeding ground up north in Alaska or northern Canada, so I don’t see them doing this every year. RBMEs will stick around through April though so I can be hopeful I’ll see this again.
Males swim in a characteristic Ready or Courtship-Intent posture, head withdrawn into shoulders, crest raised, and bill pointing slightly upward (Johnsgard 1965, Cramp and Simmons 1977).
The 2 most frequent male displays are Head-Shake and Salute-Curtsy (Van Der Kloot and Morse 1975). When the head is fully forward in the Salute Posture, the white of the neck and anterior pattern are most conspicuous (Figure 2B).
During Salute, a nasal whining catlike yeow call is produced with bill open, and with the dip into Curtsy, the bill is opened again and a second soft yeow can be heard. - birdsna.org/...
The sounds at this event were delightful. The males were meowing melodiously, and every now and then I’d hear the females interjecting a succinct low-pitched beep. The counterpoint was strange and hilarious.
Some of the hens paid attention while others were oblivious. There were also some first-year males (similar to hens but with the mascara look) who are getting an education.
Buffleheads
Buffies spend most of the winter flocking, so there’s lots of opportunity for posturing from fall onward.
Courting behaviors, from Birds of North America:
Head-bobbing is the most common courtship display. A characteristic sequence of actions during courtship involves Fly-over and Landing, Head-shake-forwards and Wing-lifting, and small Head-bobbing (Figure 2). Fly-over and Landing occur when a male courts a female in the presence of other males. At landing, the male is upright and the crest is erected as he “skis” on water with his feet pointing forward, thereby showing his conspicuous black and white upper plumage and bright pink feet. After he settles on the water, the head is thrust forward (Head-shake-forwards), and the wings are raised sharply behind the head (Wing-lifting). Head-bobbing follows.
When a male swims near a female, he may slowly raise his head with the crest erected. The head appears almost circular in lateral view and the white area attains nearly twice the normal size.
After a threat or an aggression toward a competing male, a mated male may swim toward his mate Head-bobbing, or perform a Leading Display (Donaghey 1975). Leading is a pair-maintaining display: the male leads by swimming vigorously with the neck stretched upwards, sometimes pecking to the side, and the female usually responds by a Following Display, in which she swims or runs on the surface to catch up with the male, her neck extended, and vocalizes. Myres (Myres 1959b) considered this ritualized behavior to be the best evidence that birds were paired.
Cornell’s All About Birds site (www.allaboutbirds.org/… ) names this latter behavior Nod-swimming, “Females use it to express they are interested in courtship and stimulate the nearby males to display.” Their term for Head-bobbing is Head-Pumping. This is just to point out that behavior terms are not set in stone.
I’ve had lots of opportunity to watch and even filmed my local Buffies engaged in courtship displays this winter. They are heating up now, although I’m also seeing pairs swimming around by themselves. This encounter on March 19 is of four drakes putting on shows for a single hen, who does not appear impressed. She’s trying to stay out of their way. Shortly after this video she flew off, pursued by the drakes, around the bay and then out of sight.
I see multiple head-bobbing, flyover/ landing, leading displays, and head-shake/wing-lifting amongst these four here. The latter display is perhaps my most favorite buffie behavior :)
Trumpeter Swans
are another winter visitor in my area. Trumpeters are monogamous over many years, so their courtship behaviors are intended to reestablish and reinforce the pair bond. For most of the winter I see these swans in pairs, even when they’re flocking: swimming, feeding, flying. Occasionally I see the displays described below, at any time of winter.
During mating season, trumpeter swans reunite with their former mates or begin a process of courtship to secure a mate. Courtship displays consist of pairs simultaneously spreading or raising wings, wing quivering, head bobbing and trumpeting. (Slater, 2006). Pairs face each other and, with a ruffle of feathers and lifted wings, bow gracefully. North American trumpeter swans, as their name suggests, are boisterous. For one thing, thanks to a coiled, looping windpipe, they can honk. They also go in for synchronised swimming, head bobbing and "singing".
-- animaldiversity.org/...
Like everything else they do (and that includes tipping), they are elegant and graceful.
Glaucous-winged gulls
Gulls have an exceedingly diverse and well-studied repertoire of behaviors in general, from Tinbergen on. GWGUs have long term monogamous relationships so their courting, or bonding, displays happen throughout winter. Being gulls, they are very loud, and their insistent partnering calls alert me from a long ways off. They will do many of these behaviors in unison, side by side or face to face.
Head Tossing. Head flips upward in a jerky movement; repeated at short intervals. At each flip the bird gives the Head Toss Call. Used by females during pair formation
Hunched Posture: by females to induce the male to regurgitate food, and by both sexes prior to copulation. Mostly seen on the territory but also elsewhere, such as on the feeding ground (Moyle 1966).
Choking. Crouching forward, making a chattering sound, as if regurgitating.
The Courtship Mew. Call may accompany any of these behaviors.
Allopreening. Either sex sometimes preens the head feathers of its mate.
Courtship Feeding. Female Head Tosses in front of male and touches or tugs at his bill until he regurgitates. Courtship feeding rates increase steadily during the 30 d prior to egg laying, reaching a peak 2 d before the first egg and decreasing abruptly thereafter (Salzer and Larkin 1990).
This gift-giving behavior is one of the more fascinating to watch. On my beach, it’s usually a piece of seaweed or a small stick.
Mirroring is another. It looks so quietly domestic and affectionate in pictures and yet the accompanying screeching and yoweling in gull talk, oblivious to other gulls nearby, seems so different from what we’re accustomed to. Or maybe not. How private is human courting?
On a dock, a mated pair bonding in spring:
Other gulls perform these behaviors too, although I don’t see them as much.
Hooded Mergansers
have crests, which are very changeable and expressive. Unlike gulls and swans, the sexually dimorphic ducks make it very clear who is performing for whom. I’ve tried to tell if there’e a difference in the behavior of birds whose genders are unknown — either I’m not observant enough or they behave the same. Behavior of birds whose gender is obvious is distinctly different.
Hooded Merganser courting display repertoire:
Males have elaborate courtship behaviors which include Crest-raising, Head-shaking, Head-throws with Turn-the-back-of-the-head, Head-pumping, Upward-stretch, Upward-stretch with Wing-flap, and ritualized Drinking (Figure 3).
Crest-raising may occur separately or in conjunction with Head-shaking which together are often performed 3–4 times as a precursor to Head-throws. Head-throws, the most elaborate display, are usually performed with the male parallel to the intended female. With crest raised, males bring their head abruptly backward touching their back. A rolling frog-like crraaa-crrrooooo call is given as the head is returned to the upright position and turned away from the intended female. Sometimes after a Head-shake, no Head-throw is given, instead males extend their neck, open their bill and give a hollow pop call.
Pumping involves an upward and outward motion of the head, with the bill tracing ellipses in space.
Upward-stretch is a head shaking stretch performed with crest raised and appears to have evolved through ritualization of daily comfort movements. This behavior is sometimes accompanied with Wing-flaps.
Drinking is a ritualized behavior that can be distinguished from normal drinking motions by the strongly depressed crest and almost vertical orientation of the bill.
Female courtship displays include Bobbing, where the head moves up and down in rapid, jerky motion with bill pointed downward, uttering a hoarse gack . More common is Head-pumping in response to the same behavior by males.
- birdsna.org/...
Two drakes were pursuing a hen on this occasion, performing several of the displays described above. It was raining at the time, which seemed to make no difference whatever. The explosive fluidity of those crests is so gorgeous. That includes the hens.
Wild Turkey
The Phasianids — pheasants, grouse, turkeys etc — aren’t aquatic birds like the previous examples of course, but like them are creatures that live out in the open rather than up in trees. They are known for males putting on visual displays, sometimes in a particular location (leks).
The tribe of wild turkeys living in my neighborhood are starting to gobble, and it won’t be long before they’ll be strutting their stuff.
Two highly stereotyped behavioral elements from males: the gobbling call of fixed intensity, which attracts females or competing males over considerable distances, and the strutting posture with the tail fanned vertically, wings lowered and primaries 3–7 dragging ground, feathers on back elevated, head thrown backward and pressed into interscapular area, bill forward, and crop inflated. Strut continues with a gliding movement of male about a soliciting or nonsoliciting female, with an occasional (or more often at maximum excitement) chump and humm (Drumming; see Sounds: nonvocal). Gobble can be given spontaneously but strutting usually follows appearance of female (Schleidt 1968).
Have you been seeing any courting activity? Any pictures you’ve captured from the past? Birds put a lot of effort and energy into preparing for a successful nesting season, and sometimes it’s all out in plain view!
And of course, the Dawn Chorus is now open for your reports of birdy activity you’ve seen over the past week. Please share your observations in the comments.