Meridian, Idaho
I got quite an eyeful last night while sitting on the back porch.
Two robins, Romeo and Juliette, had a little fling. Actually they had FIVE flings within about three minutes. 🙂
While watching their trysts, a couple of noteworthy things happened.
After their initial coupling, the male flew about twenty feet away. The female bounced towards him about four times cutting that distance in half. Then she just stared at Romeo and waited.
He paused about thirty seconds, all the time staring back at Juliette, and then flew back for another special visit.
Their staring pauses were almost the equivalent of each having a cigarette… 🙂
This was repeated until they had a total of five cigarettes.
Then after the Romeo flew away the fifth time, Juliette turned around started looking for worms. She must have gotten the munchies.
And, apparently, the honeymoon was over.
He came back and tried to share dinner with her by nibbling on her worm.
But she took it and flew away never to be seen again…
I wondered:
If Romeo had brought Juliette a new worm instead of trying to eat hers, would he have been rewarded rather than dumped?
How interesting!
Lorraine, Is “How interesting.” a polite way to say, “Kathy’s crazy and talking about bird procreation habits?” Hee hee hee… 🙂 After unpacking tons of doo dads yesterday, this WAS the MOST interesting thing to happen all day. 🙂
Cracked me up. And did you know – I didn’t until I googled – that robins lay their eggs at mid-morning unlike most birds that lay in early morning. They don’t want to miss out on early morning worms.
https://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/robin/EggstraEggstra.html
That was a fascinating read, Carol. I can’t believe how many worms the robins are eating. After reading that I know why Juliette is eating so many, but I’m not sure why Romeo is… 😉
I thought it was interesting what you wrote on Robins. Smart birds if they want to eat first! I feel bad that you thought that is what I was thinking.
Shoot. Now I feel bad, Lorraine. I was just kidding you… Sometimes after I post something I wonder how weird the things I think about must seem to others. 😉
That was fascinating. I didn’t know about the brood patch, Carol, or the laying differences. Kathy, Romeo’s behavior reminds me of how Dan and kids always want to eat out of my bowl/plate and drink out of my cup. Some things remain true across species…
Giggles. Good one, Joanne. Makes me think of Helen’s comment about how her family showed up at meal times with their mouths open like baby birds.