{"id":14349,"date":"2013-04-14T06:07:23","date_gmt":"2013-04-14T12:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=14349"},"modified":"2013-04-14T06:07:23","modified_gmt":"2013-04-14T12:07:23","slug":"mating-rituals-of-the-american-avocet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/14\/mating-rituals-of-the-american-avocet\/","title":{"rendered":"Mating Rituals Of The American Avocet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The moment I pulled up on this small pond at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge last Friday I knew there’d be some opportunities for interesting behavioral shots.\u00a0 There were small groups of American Avocets and Black-necked Stilts that were excitedly chirping away and flying at each other in typical springtime behavior for these mixed flocks.<\/p>\n

The lighting was a little harsh for proper exposure on these largely black and white birds but of course I documented the behaviors anyway.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

In avocets, nest sites are selected jointly by both birds of the pair and these two were doing their typical ritualized nest searching.\u00a0 Both birds point their bills at the potential site.\u00a0 Early on in the process the male takes the lead in the search while the female watches but later on she joins in as we see here.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

The birds were in clusters on the pond\u00a0and occasionally one of the avocets would aggressively fly at other birds in another group.\u00a0 This avocet had\u00a0taken off to do just that.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

Mating involves a complex sequence of displays and is initiated by the female.\u00a0 Here she assumes the “solicitation posture” where she extends her neck far forward and lays her bill on or near the surface of the water while holding her tail up.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

As she holds this posture the male begins “sexual preening” where he walks repeatedly (up to 16 times)\u00a0to both sides of the female as he rigorously preens.<\/p>\n

This part of the display can last for up to three minutes and I always get a little tense while it’s occurring because many things can interrupt this behavior and “break the mood” so that I don’t get the shots of the rest of the process.\u00a0 Other birds can fly in or a vehicle drive by on the road and it’s all over until next time.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

But this time nothing happened to interrupt the behavior and the male mounted the female.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

As he did so I was disappointed that the female turned away from me.\u00a0 Here the “cloacal kiss” is just about to occur.\u00a0 I thought it was interesting to see\u00a0how far the female must lean forward to keep both birds balanced with the male in this rear position on her back.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

Immediately after copulation the birds stand side to side and cross bills.\u00a0 Every time I’ve seen this part of the ritual the male also has his wing draped over the back of the female, as you see here.\u00a0 It’s difficult for me not to refer to this as\u00a0an “endearing” gesture.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

As they turned their backs to me once again the male still has his right wing over the back of the female in a seemingly protective and loving way…<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

and then they stroll off into the sunset in lock-step (notice the almost exact position and angle of the legs).<\/p>\n

Well, there really wasn’t<\/em> a sunset.\u00a0 Couldn’t resist…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The moment I pulled up on this small pond at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge last Friday I knew there’d be some opportunities for interesting behavioral shots. There were small groups of American Avocets and Black-necked Stilts that were excitedly chirping away and flying at each other in typical springtime behavior for these mixed flocks.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[437,334,391],"tags":[27,49,477,475,478,146,1016,1380,471,474,473],"class_list":["post-14349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-avocets-shore-birds","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-american-avocet","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-cloacal-kiss","tag-copulation","tag-cross-bills","tag-flight","tag-mating","tag-nest-selection","tag-recurvirostra-americana","tag-sexual-preening","tag-solicitation-posture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3Jr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}