7 stunning bird courtship displays that’ll make you swoon

Before sex, first comes the courtship period – and few know how to catch the eye quite like birds. Male birds have evolved an array of dazzling displays designed to attract females, strengthen pair bonds and prove they’re made of the right stuff to raise their would-be partner’s young. Here are seven that caught our eye.

 

The Eyes Have It

Indian Peafowl Pavo cristatus

In most bird species, the males are the flamboyant sex, and the females are the ones who do the choosing. This arrangement has come about because the process of producing eggs involves a great amount of energy on the female’s part, so she is extra careful to ensure that these efforts aren’t expended on a male who will produce weak offspring.

Females take the business of selecting a mate seriously, scrutinising their calls and their plumage for any hints that can tell her about his strength, health or vigour – traits, after all, that will be passed on to his young. Thus, to maximise their chances of spreading their genes, in some species the males have developed flashy courtship displays to show off their charms in the best possible light, and woo females away from their rivals.

Traits preferred by the female of the species are exaggerated over time. There is no better, or more famous, illustration of the evolutionary cost of this process for the male than of the peacock – encumbered, thanks to many generations of sexual selection, with an impossibly ornamental tail, which it flares in spectacular fashion in its attempt to court a peahen.

Flash mob

Western Capercaillie Tetrao urogallus

In species where the male plays little or no part in raising the young, females can afford to be extra picky, and males will often gather to forest clearings – or ‘leks’, to engage in a communal mating display. This competitive behaviour is known as ‘lekking’.

One of the most famous lekkers, peacock aside, is the Western Capercaillie, a grouse that calls the conifer forests of Eurasia its home. The male, twice the size of the female, expends an incredible amount of effort trying to attract a mate during lekking season, puffing its chest out, fanning its tail into a semi-circle and extending its neck high in the air.

These displays serve to determine the pecking order, and since the spoils go to the alpha male, capercaillie gents go to great lengths to assert their dominance, with many dying as a result of fighting wounds, or simply collapsing from exhaustion.

Man-akin in the Mirror

Red-capped Manakin Ceratopipra mentalis

While lekking is most commonly associated with Galliformes, the behaviour can be observed in many different bird species, from waders to hummingbirds. They are not always social gatherings, such as with the Indian Peafowl. In ‘exploded leks’, the males remain out of the line of sight of their competitors (but within earshot), calling out to try to entice a female into evaluating his display.

Exploded leks tend to be more elaborate than classical leks, as males work to develop ever-more intricate displays in an attempt to persuade females that he’s got the goods. In the case of many species of manakins – small forest birds found in the American tropics – the ‘goods’ the ladies are looking for are acrobatics and motor co-ordination – signs the male can pass down genes to their offspring that will aid them in evading predators.

The Red-capped Manakin of Central and South America has one of the more eye-popping displays – it snaps its wings and shimmies up and down its branch, moving its feet at such a pace it gives the illusion that it is performing Michael Jackson’s trademark move, the moonwalk.

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