Courtship displays

A courtship ritual is a true spectacle which can be thrilling for the birdwatcher to witness,

February is when the majority of our resident birds start thinking about finding a mate, pairing up, and setting about ensuring that their species survives and even thrives. The process of finding a mate, though, varies enormously from one species to another, with a wide range of different strategies used to attract and hold the attention of the opposite sex – indeed, several different strategies are often combined. Over the next four pages, we look at some of them…

1 Physical display

This is probably the broadest category, and can itself be broken down into three sub-categories. Firstly, there’s the simple but effective display provided by the bird’s plumage, or sometimes by its bill or other bare body parts. Think of the Robin’s red breast, the Great Spotted Woodpecker’s red nape and vent, or the bright crowns of the Goldcrest and Firecrest. All are signals to females that the male is available for breeding, as well as often warnings to other males to stay clear. Long crests, such as on a Lapwing or Grey Heron, serve a similar purpose. One of the more unusual of these is the Swallow’s tail streamers (above). The longer and more symmetrical a male’s streamers are, the more successful he is with the opposite sex, despite the fact that they actually hinder his aerial foraging. This is known as the ‘handicap principle’ – the bird is telling females that he can afford to have showy but unwieldy appendages and still provide for himself and any potential family – the extraordinary plumages of many of birds-of-paradise is a more extreme example.

2 Leks

These are gatherings of birds at which the males compete with each other for the attentions of females – in some cases they’ll come to blows, although, in others, they merely try to out-sing and out-display each other. They’re often performed at particular sites year after year. In the UK, the best known lekkers are Black Grouse (above). The males spend much of the year attending them each morning, although the females only generally start showing up in February and stay until around May. Males strut to and fro, fanning their tail feathers out, while the females watch from vantage points such as tussocks and fence posts. Ruff are another species which lek, and while they’re rare and irregular breeders here, passage birds do sometimes start lekking while on their way to their Arctic breeding grounds. But perhaps the world’s most celebrated lekkers are the Andean Cock-of-the-rock, whose colourful, noisy gatherings are seen and heard in the cloud forests of South America.