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Psilos Bird Photography |
Underaged courtship Nature or nurture? |
We all know that with birds somethings are copied and somethings have to be part of their genetic design. We all know that with migrating birds the urge to fly south at the end of summer is part of their instinct and that the way birds cope with different foods is often copied when they are young by watching their parents. But how do we know to what extent many things are nurtured and how many instinctive? Towards the end of October 2006 I watched a family of young Great crested grebe chicks (approx six weeks old) feeding and being fed fish by their parents. After surfacing several times with nothing one juvenile surfaced with a small flimsy piece of rag in his beak. Another juvenile close by was also attracted by the rag and came over to join him. Circling one another pecking at the rag the birds then, facing one another, rose up out of the water and proceeded to do the courtship display so often seen of the parents in spring. Heads turning rythmically from side to side this continued for about thirty seconds before both birds sank back down in the water and the bird without the rag quickly swam off. |
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Once the other bird had lost interest then
the second bird quickly dropped the rag and swam off back to the
rest of the family in the middle of the lake. Now we all from time
to time see non breeding birds flirting and attempting to court
other birds but what is interesting here is that these are such
young birds and that they could not have seen their parents or any
other birds do this as they were not even born then. Since there
are also no other pairs of grebe on the lake they couldnt have witnessed
it elsewhere. This only leaves therefore once conclusion: that the
courtship dance of the Great crested grebe is done purely from instinct.
Prior to watching this I had never seen this happen before and if
anyone has seen it I would love to hear from them. It is not often
we watch something so unique in nature and I feel truely priveledged
to have been there to see it. |
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