{"id":22628,"date":"2014-03-13T05:00:49","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=22628"},"modified":"2014-03-12T06:53:07","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T12:53:07","slug":"avocet-mating-rituals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/13\/avocet-mating-rituals\/","title":{"rendered":"Avocet Mating Rituals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mating behaviors of American Avocets are complex, ritualized, predictable and quite fascinating.<\/p>\n

A few days ago I saw my first American Avocets of the season – four birds flying over the Antelope Island causeway as we approached the island.\u00a0 I’ve been anticipating their return for weeks\u00a0and that experience reminded me of a series of photos I took last April of mating Avocets at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.\u00a0 Some of the images are a little contrasty but I think they demonstrate the behavior pretty well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The female initiates mating with this “solicitation posture” where she holds her head and neck low over the water.\u00a0 Then the male begins “sexual preening” where he vigorously shakes his bill in the water…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0and\u00a0then brings\u00a0some of that water up to his breast (inside his bill) and begins to preen the feathers there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The male moves from one side of the female to the other many times (up to 16 times) and the intensity of the splashing increases just before he mounts her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The very long legs of the species must make it difficult for the male to establish balance on the females back and usually when I’ve watched this process the male braces his bill on one side of her head, apparently to give him a third balance point to brace against.\u00a0 He also usually flutters his wings until cloacal contact is made.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0This is the moment of the “cloacal kiss”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0As he dismounts, the male wraps his wing over the female’s back…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0and they cross bills and perform a “bill-crossed run” of up to a dozen steps across the shallow water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As they separate both sexes assume this\u00a0beguiling, identical\u00a0posture for a step or two.\u00a0 I’ve never seen this posture described in the literature but in my experience it always occurs.<\/p>\n

This entire mating ritual is almost identical to that of the Black-necked Stilt, which may contribute to hybridization between the two species.<\/p>\n

I always try to photograph these avocet mating behaviors each spring.\u00a0 Hopefully I’ll get another chance in a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 For the next few days I’ll be out of town on my first camping\/photo trip of the season so I won’t be able to actively participate in any discussions that may pop up in the comments (though I will be reading them on my phone).\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

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

Mating behaviors of American Avocets are complex, ritualized, predictable and quite fascinating. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22632,"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":[437,338,334,391],"tags":[27,49,477,471,474,473],"class_list":["post-22628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-avocets-shore-birds","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-american-avocet","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-cloacal-kiss","tag-recurvirostra-americana","tag-sexual-preening","tag-solicitation-posture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/american-avocet-7120-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5SY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22628","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=22628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}