Laura Erickson - The Love Lives of Birds

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Edited by Deborah Burns

Art direction and book design by Alethea Morrison

Indexed by Samantha Miller

Illustrations by Veronica B. Lilja/peppercookies.com

Additional watercolor backgrounds by Katie Eberts

Text 2020 by Laura Erickson

Ebook production by Slavica A. Walzl

Ebook version 1.0

October 27, 2020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Erickson, Laura, 1951- author.

Title: The love lives of birds : courting and mating rituals / Laura Erickson.

Description: North Adams, MA : Storey Publishing, [2020]

Identifiers: LCCN 2020029587 (print) | LCCN 2020029588 (ebook) | ISBN 9781635862751 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781635862768 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Birds--Behavior. | Courtship in animals. | Parental behavior in animals.

Classification: LCC QL698.3 .E755 2020 (print) | LCC QL698.3 (ebook) | DDC 598.15--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029587

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029588

who gave me my first cloudless days, balmy nights, books, babies, and birds, and has stuck with me for decades longer than the oldest swan on record.

How do birds find a mate? The approaches of different species are as varied as those of humans. Some birds seem like Casanovas or even Marquises de Sade, while others seem as courtly and reticent as the most genteel Jane Austen characters. Cranes and swans have the leisure we humans do to spend months or even years making a permanent selection, even as Arctic shorebirds must make their choice within days, or even hours, of arriving on their breeding grounds so they can raise young before heading south again.

As with humans, bird species use different combinations of factors to judge members of the opposite sex. The quality and persistence of a males song, the energy and style of his courtship displays, how well a female responds to his overtures, how well the two coordinate dance moves or song duets, the quality and quantity of romantic food offerings, the intensity and color of plumage or body parts each species uses some combination of these cues, and more, to identify the ideal mate.

Age is an important criterion for birds: most want the oldest, most experienced mate they can find. Birds dont carry a passport or birth certificate, so how can they reveal their age to a prospective mate? Mockingbirds learn new songs throughout life, so the more songs in a males repertoire, the older on average he is. Both male and female hawks of some species start out with yellow eyes, which over months and years turn orange and then ruby red. Young Cedar Waxwings have no red tips on their flight feathers; these tiny markings appear and then increase in number as the birds grow older. Year-old male American Redstarts resemble grayish and yellow females; they are fully capable of breeding, but females prefer mates bearing the black and orange plumage of older males, only settling for a younger one when no older males are available.

For most wild birds, its impossible to be too old to make an ideal mate, because for both sexes, the time between a mature bird losing its competitive edge and dying is usually very short, long before the bird is no longer physiologically fertile. One female Laysan Albatross still reared a chick when she was at least 67 years old! In only a few species do birds seem to have a sweet spot between being too young and too old. The blue foot color on boobies tends to grow duller with age, yet many of these older males still succeed in attracting mates.

Beyond these very basic criteria, scientists dont understand what leads two birds to select each other. Is it a simple matter of proximity and chance? Do birds flirt? Might some want sparks to fly in a kind of magic before theyll commit? We may use the birds and the bees as a metaphor for courtship and sex, but our understanding of the fundamentals of just how birds establish and sustain relationships is superficial and rudimentary.

Thats okay. As Walt Whitman wrote, You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific about birds a certain free margin, and even vagueness perhaps ignorance, credulity helps your enjoyment of these things.

Adlie Penguin

In many species, males offer prospective mates food or nesting materials, and expect sex when a female accepts a gift, but this is virtually always in the context of forming and strengthening a pair bond. The female learns what kind of provider the male is, and food helps her body get into top shape for producing eggs.

The exchange of payment or gifts for sex without the context of building a lasting connection wouldnt seem to make sense for birds, so engaging in sexual activity for payment wouldnt seem at all likely in the natural world.

The exchange of payment or gifts for sex without the context of building a lasting connection wouldnt seem to make sense for birds.

Or would it? The Adlie Penguin, a small Antarctic bird, pairs off and starts nesting in late winter, when ice and snow cover the ground. To keep the eggs a bit warmer, and also to protect them from being inundated with meltwater, Adlies lay their eggs on a platform of stones. But as spring progresses, meltwater becomes deeper, requiring even more stones after all the easiest-to-find ones have been taken.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and some female Adlies offer to have sex with one or more single males in exchange for stones to build up their own nests. Sometimes a female manages to initiate mutual courtship behaviors with an unpaired male, grab a stone, and leave without actually mating with him. And after one brief sexual encounter, a female took 62 stones from the unwitting single male over a period of an hour. Nesting males, equally desperate for stones, dont object to the means by which their mates gather them, and thus their otherwise monogamous relationships dont end up on the rocks.