{"id":9836,"date":"2012-12-04T10:12:19","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T17:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=9836"},"modified":"2012-12-04T10:12:19","modified_gmt":"2012-12-04T17:12:19","slug":"lark-sparrows-a-unique-mating-behavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/04\/lark-sparrows-a-unique-mating-behavior\/","title":{"rendered":"Lark Sparrows – A Unique Mating Behavior"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back on May 25 of this year, on this<\/strong><\/em><\/a> post about Lark Sparrows,\u00a0I made the following statement at the end of the post:<\/p>\n

“Now that I have some decent images of this species my next goal with them is to capture some of their unique behaviors.\u00a0 These birds often pass a twig from the male to the female during copulation (an impressive display of multitasking and concentration).\u00a0 And they do a turkey-like strut during courtship.\u00a0 I would love to capture either behavior.”<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In your comments, several of you gave me encouragement in meeting that goal and 11 days later I was at least partly able to do so.\u00a0 These are those images.<\/p>\n

A couple of these photos may be a little “clinical” for some,\u00a0but to me it’s all behavior and it’s all interesting.\u00a0 Techs for all images were: 1\/4000 or 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em>The courtship of Lark Sparrows\u00a0includes behaviors found in no other songbirds.\u00a0\u00a0Prior to actual mating, the\u00a0male struts like a turkey, with its tail sticking up to show off its white tail spots and its wings drooping to the ground.\u00a0\u00a0 Then, before the male mounts her, he picks up\u00a0a twig (or twigs)\u00a0which he passes to the female just before copulation.\u00a0 When mating is complete (they may mate or attempt to mate up to 20 times in 3.5 minutes) the female often flies off with the twig.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

The courtship had already begun when I approached this mated pair.\u00a0 Normally, this species doesn’t allow me to get this close but I suspect they were so intent on their activities that they weren’t about to allow something as trivial as a\u00a05,000 lb pickup with two humans inside clicking away at them to interfere with their nuptials.\u00a0 As you can see, the female has already been presented with the twig.\u00a0 I don’t know how many times copulation may have already occurred by the time I got into position to take photographs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

After copulation, the male would take off…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

and land\u00a0on a nearby perch (the one to the right of the frame), wait a few seconds…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

and then return to the waiting female…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

for another go at it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

Her back wasn’t a stable platform…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

and he often had to make several “touch and go” landings before…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

an actual copulation was concluded.\u00a0\u00a0 Copulation in most\u00a0bird species (those without an intromittent organ or penis)\u00a0has been referred to as the “cloacal kiss” because the male and female must actually touch cloacal openings to pass sperm from the male to the female.\u00a0 Here you can see the\u00a0exposed cloacal opening of the female just prior to copulation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

And in this image you can see the cloacal opening of the male as he flies off immediately after mating.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

He returns to the female (notice that she still has the twigs in her beak)…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

then lands on her back..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"lark<\/p>\n

and they mate once again.<\/p>\n

This went on for a good long while\u00a0and I don’t remember how many times I saw them actually mate.\u00a0 The action was fast and furious and the photography difficult.\u00a0 In between matings I didn’t know where to focus – on the female as she waited for the male or on the male at the other perch to try to get\u00a0him in flight as he approached her.\u00a0 Often I made the wrong choice and most of the actual flight shots weren’t sharp enough.\u00a0\u00a0And because of the light angle I seldom got catch lights in the eyes.<\/p>\n

But I’m always delighted to be able to photograph interesting\u00a0behaviors like this and it’s a very special feeling\u00a0when birds allow me\u00a0to observe such intimate behaviors up close.<\/p>\n

Maybe next time I’ll be able to catch the “turkey strut” of the male.\u00a0 What fun that would be!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Back on May 25 of this year, on this post about Lark Sparrows,\u00a0I made the following statement at the end of the post: “Now that I have some decent images of this species my next goal with them is to capture some of their unique behaviors.\u00a0 These birds often pass a twig from the male to the female during copulation (an impressive display of multitasking and concentration).\u00a0 And they do a turkey-like strut during courtship.\u00a0 I would love to capture either behavior.”   In your comments, several of you gave me encouragement in meeting that goal and 11 days later I was at least partly able to do so.\u00a0 These are those images. A couple of these photos may be a little “clinical” for some,\u00a0but to me it’s all behavior and it’s all interesting.\u00a0 Techs for all images were: 1\/4000 or 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc The courtship of Lark Sparrows\u00a0includes behaviors found in no other songbirds.\u00a0\u00a0Prior to actual mating, the\u00a0male struts like a turkey, with its tail sticking up to show off its white tail spots and its wings drooping to the ground.\u00a0\u00a0 Then, before the male mounts her, he picks up\u00a0a twig (or twigs)\u00a0which he passes to the female just before copulation.\u00a0 When mating is complete (they may mate or attempt to mate up to 20 times in 3.5 minutes) the female often flies off with the twig.   The courtship had already begun when I approached this mated pair.\u00a0 Normally, this species doesn’t allow me to get this close…<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,334,367,395],"tags":[50,566,726,1019,477,475,733,1017,197,1016,1014,472,1015,1018,1020],"class_list":["post-9836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-lark-sparrows","category-miscellaneous","tag-behavior","tag-catch-light","tag-chondestes-grammacus","tag-cloaca","tag-cloacal-kiss","tag-copulation","tag-courtship","tag-intromittent-organ","tag-lark-sparrow","tag-mating","tag-mating-behavior","tag-mating-display","tag-pass-twig","tag-penis","tag-turkey-strut"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-2yE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9836","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=9836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}