Tokens of Affection

Birds have many ways of showing affection for their partners. One way is allopreening, where a bird uses its bill to groom a mate, twirling each individual feather in its beak (like these Macaws). Other birds present their partners with gifts like moss or sticks. A female Arabian Babbler might reciprocate with a gift of her own — or just cut to the chase and lead her suitor to a rendezvous spot in the shrubbery.

BirdNote ^®

Tokens of Affection

Written by Wenfei Tong

This is BirdNote.

People have many ways to express love. But humans aren’t the only ones with romantic gestures — many birds have their own ways of showing affection:

One way is allopreening, where a bird uses its bill to groom a partner, twirling each individual feather in its beak. In more than 500 species, allopreening helps cement pair bonds and reduce the chances of separation but does not, ahem, prevent infidelity.

[Common Raven comfort sounds]

In some other species, birds present their partners with gifts like moss or sticks. Among ravens, this can elicit a bout of allopreening or playing with the present together.

[Common Raven comfort sounds]

A female Arabian Babbler might reciprocate with a gift of her own — or just cut to the chase and lead her suitor to a rendezvous spot in the shrubbery.

[Arabian Babbler calls]

Male Whiskered Terns gather food for their mates — but things don’t always go as planned. Some females have been known to exploit courtship feeding by luring males into giving up fish meant for another female and then evading copulation.

[Whiskered Terns calling]

If you’re struggling to find the right romantic gesture this Valentine’s Day, you could copy these birds and offer some moss or a dead fish. Or... perhaps stick to a box of chocolates.

For BirdNote, I’m Wenfei Tong.

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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Production Manager: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Common Raven ML62608 recorded by W Gunn 0:05 - 0:55. Arabian Babbler ML1736 recorded by B King 1:00 - 1:10. Whiskered Tern ML203905341 recorded by J Del Hoyo 1:10 - 1:45.

BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2021 BirdNote February 2021 Narrator: Wenfei Tong

ID# courtship-02-2021-02-14 courtship-02

References
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324620904_True_deception_durin…

https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/28/4/1142/3865432?login=true

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1567.pdf

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2019.00087/full

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691188843/bird-love