{"id":167167,"date":"2025-03-07T05:20:55","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T12:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=167167"},"modified":"2025-03-07T07:56:04","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T14:56:04","slug":"aom-the-reluctant-lothario-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/07\/aom-the-reluctant-lothario-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"AOM – The Reluctant Lothario, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we last visited AOM<\/a><\/span><\/span>, his lovelorn mate had attempted to seduce him three separate times by presenting him with obvious solicitation postures. He ignored her first two sultry invitations and outright rejected the third, by flying away from her and landing a few feet away from her on the pavilion rooftop.<\/p>\n

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Here, AOM is on the left, after landing about two feet away from her after her third attempt at seduction. This is the last photo in my previous post. The 11 photos below continue the story.<\/p>\n

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A few seconds after landing there he apparently had a change of heart. Her rather unenthusiastic solicitation posture must have been enough to inspire him. So he took off…<\/p>\n

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toward her and…<\/p>\n

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landed on her back with the obvious intention of mating with her. Finally.<\/p>\n

I was impressed that he landed completely on the flat of his tarsi, instead of on his feet. Landing on his feet would have the potential of scratching her with his needle-sharp claws. At least I assume that’s why he landed the way he did, although balance may also have played a role.<\/p>\n

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With no penis involved, and lots of large and small feathers potentially in the way, the successful transfer of sperm to the female is one neat trick – on the part of them both. Keeping the male balanced and relatively stable on such an unsteady platform isn’t easy, but they both contribute to the effort – the male by using his wings and the female by…<\/p>\n

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orienting her body almost vertically and getting her tail out of the way. Here she’s holding her tail far to the side, away from where their cloacas are meeting for sperm transfer.<\/p>\n

I took 33 photos while he was on top of her but most of them are similar so I’m only including two of them today. But 33 photos while he was up there tells me that the actual mating took less than 3 seconds (2.74999 seconds to be precise – my camera’s burst rate is set at 12 frames\/second). <\/em><\/p>\n

Whenever I see birds mating, I can’t help but think “Wham, bam, thank you ma’am”. I know, immature of me. But remember, I spent 33 years in classrooms full of teenagers, half of them boys in the process of being introduced to their suddenly gushing hormones. And I was a biology teacher of all things. Couldn’t, and still can’t, help myself.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Now that the task is completed, it’s time to dismount.<\/p>\n

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This might be my favorite shot of the series. I like the way their tails are crossed with her left wing, his leaping posture with one leg and foot reaching forward\u00a0and the fact that I got catch lights in both of their eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Then he landed on one foot, perfectly displaying the AOM on his green leg band.<\/p>\n

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The female seemed reluctant to abandon her tail-up mating posture. She held it to some degree for an unusually long time. I couldn’t help thinking that she was wistfully saying to herself “Well, that didn’t last long”.<\/p>\n

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AOM wasted no time getting further away from her after his short performance.<\/p>\n

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Her reaction looked to me like she was stomping her foot.<\/p>\n

I can only imagine why.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: Normally I don’t name ‘my’ birds. I think naming a wild bird can border on being disrespectful. I made an exception for AOM and since I did, I feel badly that I didn’t name his mate. She isn’t banded so I just didn’t.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Did AOM have a change of heart? (12 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167174,"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":[340,3,334,391],"tags":[7745,31,4421,7762,7761,473,311,6979],"class_list":["post-167167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-american-kestrels-mating","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-banded-kestrel","tag-burst-rate-of-the-canon-r5","tag-naming-birds","tag-solicitation-posture","tag-utah-2","tag-wham-bam-thank-you-maam"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/american-kestrel-4685-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Huf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167167","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=167167"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167228,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167167\/revisions\/167228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}