Reply #15: Watching bird pron. [View All]

[TZ]

I spent a summer working for a professor of mine at the University of Maryland. He was studying sexual selection in Great and Spotted Bowerbirds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_Bowerbird
Basically I watched all the courtship rituals and recorded different aspects of the behavior and whether or not a male was successful. It was pretty interesting, full of avian sex and violence (other males would come and steal stuff or destroy the bower when the owner wasn't around..or when he was which usually ended in a bird fight). Sometimes it was a PITA though like counting the number of times a male screeched during a particular courtship (headache inducing) but overall it was fascinating. At one time I could comfortably say I was one of the world's foremost Spotted Bower Bird experts...:)