With the days stretching longer begins the mating season for the mourning doves in my backyard. The male stretches his wings to make a downward circular glide. Then he puffs out his chest and slowly bounces his head up and down to call for his mate. They like to perch close to each other on a branch of the apricot tree, next to the birdbath. They nibble the other’s neck, grasp their beaks, and bounce their heads in unison. At times, one of them saunters or seemingly enjoys sunbathing on the ground while the other watches on. When I am out and about, they land on the birdbath to observe me, as if to acknowledge that I am the water bearer. On lazy sunny afternoons, they sit on the powerlines and call out a soft, fading “koo”, which sounds like something coming from a sleepy owl.
Mourning doves are grey and brown in color. They are neither exciting in color nor in noise, but they are monogamous and mate for life. Others, such as the North American sharp-tailed grouse, perform in an orgy kind of display. Up to twenty males may meet every morning during the breeding-season on a level spot, called a lek, and here they run round and round in a circle of about fifteen or twenty feet in diameter, so that the ground is worn bare like a fairy-ring. Purple neck sacs are inflated and deflated as they compete for females. The females select the most dominant in the center of the lek, copulate, and then leave to nest and raise the young in solitary.
Among the most colorful dancers are the birds-of-paradise, of which the male may practice his dance for days before courtship. When the black sicklebill is ready, on a wooden pole he advertises aloud. As a female lands on his pole, he fluffs up his pectoral fans to make a comet shape, leaning and bending horizontally. Then he rises upward and perpendicular to the ground and rubs his flight feathers together to make woodpecker-like beating sounds, all while orbiting around her. The twelve-wired bird-of-paradise, whose twelve wire-like filaments emerge from his rear plumes, impresses the female by flicking them across her face and foreparts. His display dance is called a wire-wipe display, where he flares his breast-shield and bares his flank plumes and thighs. The Carola’s Parotia, the King of the Dance, performs the most lengthy dance of all birds-of-paradise. The male first goes through five introductory performances – the perch pivot, the head tilt, the hops-across-court, the swaying bounce, and the hop-and-shake. Then he moves to his final performances, the ballerina dances, composed of the no-waggle, the stationary waggle, and the hop-waggle, all of which could go on for hours on end. To prepare for his courtship, he constructs a plot of ground of about five square-meters, with a main court perch spanning across it. He keeps his lot in top shape by cleaning and lining it with moss to keep his claws steady while dancing.
But the most impressive of court display construction belongs to that of the MacGregor’s bower-bird, who constructs the most elaborate “maypole-type” bower. It is a tower-like structure of a central pole of twigs surrounded by a dish of moss with raised walls approximately one meter in diameter. On the bower’s twigs are decorated with flowers, fruits, insects, and other ornaments. When a female comes near, the male struts and calls, and opens his crest to display its full color. At times the male chases the female all over the aviary, then goes to his bower, picks up a gay feather or a large leaf, utters a curious kind of note, sets all his feathers erect, runs round the bower and becomes so excited that his eyes appear ready to start from his head; he continues opening first one wing, and then the other, uttering a low, whistling note, and, like the domestic cock, seems to be picking up something from the ground, until at last the female goes gently towards him. Otherwise, he may amuse himself by flying backwards and forwards, taking a shell alternately from each side, and carrying it through the archway in his mouth.
For the birds, it takes incredible effort and skills to compete for the lottery ticket of survival. Theatrical displays are not solely to impress females; they have also evolved in order to camouflage, to establish territories, and to fight off enemies. For anyone to have witnessed a cockfight, which is something akin to a gladiator match of the birds, it questions the presumption that all of it is done only to propel the genes forward into the future.
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