On early spring evenings, an open field near a low, wet woods provides the stage for a spectacle of athleticism and ardor. The American woodcock, a longbilled, long-legged wader like a sandpiper, normally inhabits upland shores; but at this time of year, at dusk and dawn, the bird seeks out nearby meadows and fields—often even suburban schoolyards.
The male selects a bare spot, a rock or some moss. Positioning himself near center stage, he cocks his tail upward, issues a hic-coughing note and speaks a series of nasal, buzzing peents. Then he begins his spiraling upward flight, curling wider and wider in the sky, twittering as he circles, until the bird is only a speck three hundred feet above. And then he falls, literally tumbling from the sky, singing a warbling note. Only feet from the ground, he rights himself and begins the display again. He will repeat it until he attracts a mate.
Spring’s mating season brings out birds’ showiest displays, their most complex songs, their most dramatic behaviors.
Pairs of red-shouldered hawks, flying with legs extended like landing gear, grab one another’s talons in midair. Male woodpeckers begin their early-morning territorial drumrolling on specially chosen resonating trees. Sleek black-and-beige cedar waxwings, easily identified by their jaylike crests, flirt by passing food back and forth: the male, holding a berry in his beak, hops sideways toward the female and passes it to her beak. The female hops away, then toward the male, and passes it back. This food passing may continue for fifteen minutes before one of the birds eats the berry.
Early morning and early evening are usually the best times for bird watching. Binoculars are handy, as is a good field guide—Donald and Lillian Stokes’ Bird Behavior is an excellent one. For the best view, keep the sun at your back so that you can clearly see the bird’s color and markings. Another helpful hint: if you know the call of the bird you’re watching, speak in the opposite pitch, and it will be less likely to hear you.
This time of year, you need not venture far afield to watch some intimate avian rituals. The common city pigeon exhibits at least six different courtship displays, some of which look quite like dancing. When courting, a male pigeon will ruffle his iridescent neck feathers, lower his head and walk in a distinctive figure eight, alternating with a tail-dragging strut. Once bonded, the couple dance together: the female puts her bill inside her mate’s open mouth, and the two move their heads rhythmically up and down.
Mallard ducks, which can be seen near virtually any city park with a pond, indulge in elaborate group displays. Three or more swimming males may perform at once for the benefit of a single female. With shaking heads and tails, arching necks, stretching wings and nodding heads, the males toss droplets of water and emit unducklike whistles to attract a particular female’s attention.
Even starlings, those despised European imports (descendants of forty pairs released in Central Park in 1890 by a New York entrepreneur who wanted to introduce all bird species mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays), perform fascinating, uncannily humanlike nesting behavior. Once the male has attracted a female by filling a suitable nest cavity (a tree hollow or cranny of a building) with dead leaves, bark and mosses, the female takes over. She completely clears out everything the mate has put into the nest and does it over herself with grasses, while the mate perches nearby, watching rather helplessly.
The most obvious and beloved of birds’ springtime activities, however, is song—an aural advertisement that at once warns and beckons. Many male birds’ spring songs are directed first at other males, notes Massachusetts Audubon Society ornithologist Wayne Petersen. Male red-winged blackbirds first ook-a-leeee to one another, while spreading their wings to flash and quiver their spectacular red-and-yellow epaulets. The females don’t arrive until later. In the early spring, male chickadees answer each other’s fee-bee whistles, singing their boundaries to one another. Only later, when the birds are in flocks, will groups of both sexes sing out their name, chickadeedeedeedee.
Not all birds are this musical. Woodpeckers, for instance, advertise territory and attract females by drumming trees with their beaks—the louder the better. “People call us up when they find their gutter is a particularly attractive drumming area for a woodpecker,” said Petersen. “The drumming subsides in a few weeks, but meanwhile, it drives them crazy.”
The male ruffed grouse, on the other hand, drums with his wings. This large ground bird lays claim to a thick stand of aspen and attracts a mate by beating his wings to produce a hollow, accelerating drumming. At the same time, he raises his head crest, extends his neck ruff and fans his tail, turkeylike, to its full extent. Only if you are lucky will you see the timid male’s display, which is usually performed near sunrise. More often, you will hear it: under favorable wind conditions, the sound can carry more than a mile.