Nightingales in November (12 page)

Having spent just over the last six months as grumpy hermits, it's now time for the Kingfishers to play centre stage in the mating game. Late February and early March are great times to watch these iridescent beauties put their early un-cooperative attitudes behind them, and turn over a new leaf by entering into their new relationship with a touch more gusto. With the slightly forced introductions now behind them, the Kingfishers will begin to cement their bonds for the oncoming breeding season by conducting noisy aerial flights as they chase one another up and down their territory. These high-speed games of pursuit can sometimes last for hours, as one minute they whizz past a few inches above the water, only to return a few seconds later well above the tree tops. It can also be tricky at this stage separating aggression from romance, and it is not uncommon to sometimes see three kingfishers pursuing each other, with an interloper hoping to gatecrash the party.

Despite being so brightly coloured, many novice birdwatchers often struggle to catch sight of a Kingfisher because of the sheer speed at which they move around their territory. But the key is to listen for their shrill, tinny whistle,
often given in flight, which tends to both announce their arrival and prepare you for a fly-by. Unlike many other birds, a Kingfisher's territory will be a linear one, often consisting of anywhere between 1km and 1.5km of river, stream or lake edge, and most of these courtship flights will tend to be centred around prospective nesting sites.

With the Kingfishers busily committing to one another, the male Lapwing in late February will be principally preoccupied with establishing a territory. Only when secured will he be in a position to woo a female, by demonstrating both the quality of his real estate and the calibre of his display within it. Nesting in open sites like farmland, pasture, marsh and moorland, Lapwings are on the one hand strongly territorial birds, but on the other, a species that often prefers to nest in loose association amongst its own kind. While group defence against dangerous predators like Foxes may make little real difference, an angry mob of Lapwings will be far more effective in driving away a marauding Carrion Crow from their eggs and chicks than that of a single pair nesting alone.

Lapwings have a complex series of breeding season behaviours, some of which are conducted in the air while others are confined to the ground. Territorial establishment starts with the males occupying definite positions, which will then proceed to form the core of their territory. These territories can vary in size, and Lapwing expert Michael Shrubb's studies seem to suggest that in Britain they may vary between 0.3 and 0.9 hectares. When territories are being laid down, boundary disputes are common and tend to see the rival males facing one another while puffing out their breast feathers and drooping their wings a little. Following this face-off they will then turn to walk in parallel along an imaginary line, as they conduct a staring match on the move. Early on in the season these staring bouts can also
become physical as they flutter into the air while trying to drive their competitor down with a few well-placed kicks.

The most important ways for Lapwings to declare ownership, however, are with the aerial ‘alternating flight' display and distinctive ‘song flight', which when seen must rank as one of the great spectacles of early spring. Most common at dawn, dusk and even at night-time, the ‘alternating flight' consists of the male flying in a zig-zag course, while showing his black and white plumage to its full extent, as he works the boundaries of his territory. This flight is often accompanied by a distinct thrumming noise made by the wind whistling through his outermost primaries. The male may then mix up the ‘alternating flight' with his ‘song flight', which comprises a rise up, followed by a steep tumbling, twisting dive. This impressive aerobatic feat is always accompanied by his characteristic ‘
pee-wip, wip, wip, pee-wip
' call – once heard and seen, never forgotten!

These aerial manoeuvres serve to pass on a variety of messages to any other Lapwings looking on. Firstly, they advertise not just that he is in possession of a territory, but also the size and dimensions of that territory. Additionally, because his flights are so physically and technically demanding, he is demonstrating to any neighbouring males and unmated females watching from the sidelines that he is fit, agile and a force to be reckoned with.

While continuing to dazzle with their own display flights, and just a few weeks before the female will start to produce her clutch, the pair of Peregrines will be cementing their bond with a combination of courtship feeding and ritualised ledge displays at the nest site. Co-operative hunting will now fall away as the female insists that it is the male alone who must provide her with all her dietary needs in preparation for the rigours of egg laying and beyond. Initially, he may be a touch reluctant to feed her, but as he gets his act together he
will fly in with prey to where she is perched, and then transfer the meal to his beak, before passing it to his hungry mate. He will also sometimes drop the prey on the ledge after landing and retreat to let her enjoy the meal, or simply drop the prey to where she is perched as he flies past.

The couple may even undertake aerial transfers of prey, with the female leaving the building or cliff, and either catching the dropped prey in mid-air, or even more impressively, flying up below him before flipping over so that he can transfer the food from his talons to hers. With the pair now roosting together constantly, they will also frequently display to one another, particularly when close to the site chosen for egg laying. These ledge displays involve either the male or female, or even both, noisily bowing to one another in subtly different ways, which seems to vary from passive one moment to aggressive the next. After a time the pair will then graduate on to a level that can almost seem ‘affectionate', as they engage in billing and gentle nibbling while producing their characteristic ‘
ee-chupping
' calls, reminiscent of a Herring Gull with a sore throat.

With Tawny Owls being the first of our chosen twelve to begin their clutch, the male will now be stepping up his courtship feeding duties to ensure the female acquires the necessary condition to come up with the goods. For those Tawny pairs largely dependent on small mammals, which often tend to be cyclical in population, if it's a ‘bust' year then these owls may at this stage decide to abort the breeding attempt, preferring instead to hang on for another year when hopefully rodent numbers will be ‘booming' once more. However, if the population levels of Bank Voles and Wood Mice look promising early in the season, then the female should be well fed, indicating that her youngsters will be well provisioned inside the nest. Perhaps most crucially of all, a good mouse and vole year will also see plenty of food on
offer as the young slowly teach themselves to hunt in the summer and autumn.

Certainly by late February, any male Robin that has not yet managed to secure a mate may well be in for a barren year, unless he gets a lucky break. With Robin pairs still doing their level best to ignore each other, a small number of females may even leave their new partners at this stage, and opt for a quick divorce by taking up with a neighbouring male, or one even further away. Even though polygyny has been occasionally reported in Robins, where two females have separate territories as the male switches between both, monogamy is generally the order of the day. Experienced and established pairs will hope to raise a minimum of two broods during a good year, but with temperatures still depressed, and invertebrates – or chick food – still thin on the ground, there will still be no immediate hurry for the Robins to get down to the business of nest building just yet. After the male has gained a female his song quickly drops in intensity, and he will remain in this ‘amber' state unless he is either forced to pick a fight with an intruder or if his mate is lost, so by now most of the Robin song heard should be coming from unpaired males. This behaviour doesn't just occur with Robins but also American Song Sparrows, leading the American ornithologist Margaret Nice to write: ‘I often say to myself on nearing a territory where silence reigns overnight, such and such a male must be either dead or married, and upon careful searching I either find two birds or none.'

For Blue Tits aiming to time their clutches to hatch at the precise moment that caterpillars are at their most abundant, like the Robins there is currently no need to rush headlong
into nest construction. Now very much an item, during the periods when the male is not preoccupied with maintaining his territory, the pair will often feed together as they visit garden bird tables or hunt through the still bare twigs for food. It tends to be around now that the sexes, when together, are most easy to differentiate. The male is usually a little larger and the blues in his plumage are a deeper colour while the yellows tend to be a touch richer. Also, in good light the male's crown, when raised, will take on a cobalt, iridescent sheen.