Thank you to Samantha Carouso Peck for an absolutely fascinating presentation about the courtship behavior of birds at the October Chapter meeting. You probably knew that male birds use elaborate plumage to attract females for mating. But did you also know that that is only what we can see? It turns out that birds have many other ways of trying to impress a potential mate. For example, a rather “bland” looking black bird makes what to us seems like simple hops on a branch actually makes repeated summersaults that are too fast for us to see; they only last 0.36 seconds. But birds have what one might characterize as inherent slow motion visual resolution and can actually see the summersault. Or what to us looks like white plumage is actually very colorful when seen under UV light. Yes, birds’ eyes can see a much larger wavelength spectrum than humans reaching into UV. Or that they can hear a whole melody in what to us sounds like a feeble tweet; in fact, they can distinguish ten notes to one for us. These are just some of examples of the extraordinary skills and behaviors displayed by birds in search of a mate.
