Have you been awakened yet this March by a loud Con-ka-ree? <\/i>The song of the male Red-winged Blackbirds is ringing through the air again.\u00a0 Male redwings have been arriving back in Maine since the first of March.\u00a0 Females will not appear for a month or more.\u00a0 The reason for this striking difference in arrival between males and females can be understood as the result of an unequal partnership.<\/p>\n
To understand what I mean, let\u2019s start with a human example.\u00a0 Susan and James have decided to open a business together.\u00a0 They know that they will need $100,000 to get the business launched. Susan has $90,000 she can contribute to the start-up and James can only contribute $10,000.\u00a0 Their partnership is essential to create the business but Susan is clearly the partner with the most to lose.\u00a0 Rightly, she should have a greater voice in the operation of the business.<\/p>\n
Now, let\u2019s switch back to birds.\u00a0 The business of birds is to make more birds.\u00a0 The egg of a female is a huge investment relative to the modest cost to a male of making sperm.\u00a0 Unequal partners again.\u00a0 Both partners are necessary for the production of viable eggs and ultimately new generations.\u00a0 The female, however, because of her far greater investment in a fertilized egg, runs the show.\u00a0 She gets to choose her mate.\u00a0 The males may have to sing, display, dance and even bring food the female to entice her to choose him as her business partner.\u00a0 In some species, the female chooses a male as her mate based on the qualities of his territory.<\/p>\n
Red-winged Blackbirds are good examples of birds in which the female chooses a mate by inspection of the quality of his territory.\u00a0 In anticipation of the arrival of the females, males vie for territories in marshes, fields and even roadside ditches throughout the state.\u00a0 Territories are relatively small, averaging about half an acre.<\/p>\n
Not all territories are equal, however. Male and female Red-winged Blackbirds forage extensively outside the territory.\u00a0 The territory is used primarily for nesting.\u00a0 A high-quality territory therefore will have dense vegetation allowing nests to be effectively hidden from predators.<\/p>\n
For the next few weeks, territorial skirmishes will be frequent among the male Red-winged Blackbirds.\u00a0 Each male tries to claim the best territory he can defend.\u00a0 Some males are stronger than others; the dominant birds are usually older, experienced males.\u00a0 The dominants will claim the best territories and the weakest birds may have no territory at all.<\/p>\n
Females only arrive after the territorial battles have finished.\u00a0 There is no reason for them to come early so they can dally a little longer in their more hospitable wintering areas to the south.<\/p>\n
When a female does arrive on the breeding ground, she assesses the habitats of the various territorial males.\u00a0 The first female will usually choose the male with the best territory.\u00a0 Subsequent females then have interesting choices to make.\u00a0\u00a0 Is it better to be the second female on a high quality territory or the only female on a lower quality territory?<\/p>\n
Territory quality is so variable that it often is better for a female to bond with an already paired male who commands a particularly fine territory.\u00a0 The high variability of territories gives rise to this mating system in which a male may have multiple mates.\u00a0 The scientific term of this phenomenon is polygyny, meaning many females.\u00a0 One dominant male may have up to a dozen females on his territory while other males may have only one mate and yet other males may be too subordinate to even have a territory and therefore have no mates.<\/p>\n
Twelve mates or no mates?\u00a0 You can see how a junior partner seeks to insure his success by arriving early on the breeding grounds.<\/p>\n
[Originally published on March 17, 2013]<\/p>\n\n
Have you been awakened yet this March by a loud Con-ka-ree? The song of the male Red-winged Blackbirds is ringing through the air again.\u00a0 Male redwings have been arriving back in Maine since the first of March.\u00a0 Females will not appear for a month or more.\u00a0 The reason for this striking difference in arrival between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4625,433,420],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":568,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions\/568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}