Educate Yourself About Birds and Their Courtship
Courtship between birds
Courtship is one step to break down the normal existing aggression barriers between two birds, because the female has to come into intimate contact with the eager male. Courtship is a very distinctive behavior and a necessary process for bird to be able to first fertilize the eggs, and then to feed and care for the nestlings together without to much fighting.
Courting for a male bird is actually quite a risky business, because for most of the year they maintain a low profile to avoid detection form all kinds of treats, but during courtship the male will expose himself in many ways, to attract the female’s attention. At first the male will act somewhat aggressively towards the female and try to chase her away, but the female will stand her ground and show a submissive side to her, and trough this she will gradually make her presence accepted.
The male will eventually shift into the courtship mode and now the bonding between the male and female will begin as a pair has formed. Most birds will have this process done in about a week, but there are some birds that will bond almost instantly.
Once the female has conquered this, she will actually be the one in most cases who chooses the male, and will do so by listening to his song repertoire, his ritual displaying, and his size and color. All these different criteria’s will show the female if the male bird is a young bird or an older more experienced male which she of course is looking for. An older more experienced male will have better parenting skills, better chances of a rich food supply in his territory, and has overall proven that he can survive and breed successfully.
There are different ways of showing a male bird’s age to a female, for example by the Barn Swallows which will display its length of its tail feathers. Or the Winter Wren which will show of its skill in the art of nest building, and the more skillful he is at finding a well-hidden place, the more attracted she will become. The House Sparrow will show of the size of his black “bib on his chest which will indicate his statues to the female.
The female will take her time in choosing a male; she might look like she is interested in one but then suddenly take off, to look at another male bird which has caught her attention. Some female birds will have several different males during a breeding season, and some will even choose to have different mates right before egg-laying.
Once a female chooses her mate and decides to breed with him one year, it is very likely that she will return to the same breeding area and pick the same male for the next years breeding season as well. By doing this the courtship will move along faster and start the nesting sooner between the pair. One part of the courtship by the male is to bring gifts of food which is called “courtship feeding”, and this show of kindness will strengthen the bond between the pair even further.
Courtship feeding is also important to the female when she is breeding, because the female will increase her diet up to 40% to form healthy large eggs. This is also important to her during incubation time which can last up to 20 days, when most of her time will be spent sitting on the eggs. Their is also something called mutual preening (allopreening) which is performed by both the male and female to maintain the bonding, and also serves as a necessary grooming function. There are males that will take advantage of any lapses right before egg-laying of other females, but there are also females that will have several partners beore egg-laying as well.
Some birds like the House Wrens can have two or even three different partners over the course of one breeding season, while some will mate for life like the Mute Swans. But once two birds have paired up, they will stay close to each other at all times before egg-laying. They will eat, roost, and sleep together, and the male will even follow the female around as she is searching for nest building materials. This is not a sign of incredible devotion, but rather insurance that the eggs she produces are his and his alone.
