Back in my grad school days, I spent large stretches of my summers in a small shack on an island with fellow students. There were three to four of people on the island at any given time, usually all girls. Now fellas, before you get your imaginations all in a tizzy, I feel I should point out that there was no running water on this island. Yes, folks, I once went five weeks without washing my hair (word to the wise: keep it in pigtails or, better yet, braids--keeps it from getting too greasy). As for "showers," believe me, baby wipes are god's gift to field researchers.
My research focused on two species, the Atlantic Puffin (which most of you are familiar with), and its larger and less colourful relative, the Common Murre (which looks like a small penguin). Some basic info on these birds: they often mate for life, and they return to the exact same site year after year to breed. They are quite long-lived (30 years or so) and only raise one chick per year.
My work consisted of sitting for long periods of time in a cramped blind, and recording the behaviours of known individual birds. The sexiest research was on the Murres, because they breed out in the open, on a rocky cliff ledge, and our blind was seriously right at the edge of the colony. The one-way mirror that we sat behind was about two feet from the nearest birds, and there were about thirty marked pairs within about 6 metres of us. (Catching the birds to put colour-coded leg bands on them was an ordeal in itself, involving a fishing-line noose at the end of a pole. We had to try and sneak the noose around the neck of an unsuspecting bird, then drag him into the blind, much to the confusion of his onlooking neighbours.)
What sort of behaviours did we observe? Well, there were greeting displays when one's mate returned from feeding at sea (it sounds something like "AAAAAAAAGH-agh-agh-agh-agh-agh;" that sounds much better than it looks in type...ask me to do it at a party, after a few drinks....). There were weird and inexplicable behaviours, such as allopreening (which more often than not involved preening one's neighbour than one's own mate) and footlooking (which is exactly what it sounds like--the bird will just sit there looking at his/her feet for a while; it may have something to do with remnants of a bygone nesting instinct, because Murres just lay their eggs on bare rock...or maybe they're just introspective?). We recorded dates of egg laying and chick hatching, and we took note of when parents brought food to their chicks.
Oh, yeah--and we watched seabird sex. Lots and lots of seabird sex. These guys and gals got busy pretty frequently in the spring, and it was quite the process: Mrs. Murre would crouch down and tip up her tail, and Mr. Murre would hop on her back and rub his cloaca (naughty bit) back-and-forth in a fanning motion over hers. Another term for this activity is "the cloacal kiss." Très romantic. We would time the length of the event (usually in the 10-20 second range) and record who was involved. Typically, sex was between a mated pair; however, there were a number of what we tactfully referred to as "extra-pair copulations" or EPCs. Interestingly, if a couple did not sucessfully rear a chick the previous year, one or both partners would be more likely to engage in EPCs.
A final feminist thought, conventional wisdom in seabird biology held that female Murres were frequently subjected to "forced EPCs" (again with the tactful terminology), as a male strategy to pass on his genes without the hassle of taking care of the chick. Well, the ladies in my lab and I observed several of these events, and we never observed a successful forced EPC--if the lady Murre wasn't interested in the Murre-man, she just didn't tip up her tail. No unwilling copulations on the female's part = no successful sneaky fertilizations by the male. Take that, old male seabird biologists and your silly male-centric theories. Neat, huh?
3 comments:
Sounds… kind of dull, but this is from someone who got a degree that involved analyzing the relationships between chords and key signatures in music. It involves more showers but less lovely scenery and hot hot bird sex.
I would very much like to hear that mating call in person though.
We had to try and sneak the noose around the neck of an unsuspecting bird, then drag him into the blind, much to the confusion of his onlooking neighbours.
To quote BarbadoSlim: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
Let me get this straight. Your job, meaux, is to run around the puffin crash pad and collar some of them with a noose, while they're looking to score, and then drag them back to your LA-BORE-A-TORY so you can give them a roofie colada and introduce them to pandas in your acquaintance?
The output of this conjugation is a "pan-puffin", by the way: meaux can't acknowledge the existence of such an awesome animal, but Pizza Hut already has the merchandising rights...
Rusty, my mom thought I was a little nuts too! It's definitely not everyone's cup of tea (lovely scenery, yes, but there's little more smelly than a seabird colony on a hot day...they aren't particular about where they do their business....), but I liked it. You're a music major, huh? I'd be intrigued to hear more about it, though to be honest, I probably wouldn't understand much....
Che, I think I'll have to get in touch with jM so that we can create this mythical pan-puffin.... heehee, it's cuddly AND bitey! (yeah, those big cute colourful beaks of theirs are f-ing brutal!)
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