August 2016: Bird Dances

Hello my bird friends, and welcome back to Caitlin’s Corner! This month, I will be showing you bird dances. As you may or may not know, some birds have particular dances to attract mates. I will be talking about a few of these dances birds perform to see if you can master the moves, too! * I love to dance, so I am super excited to introduce the topic of dance to you! So here we are:

*Warning: Do not try to get someone to like you with these dances. These are for your fun and amusement, not to find a girlfriend or boyfriend, unless you are a bird. Then, I guess that would be all right.

1. Birds of Paradise Mating Dance: I find it very amusing to watch these birds of paradise try to dance around to attract mates! From 0:28-0:38 in the video, it is really cool how this bird spreads his wings but then goes ahead to bounce his head from side to side, as if listening to a really good song. I also liked the following bird with the amazing feathers that hops around as if on a trampoline. What particularly caught my attention was the last bird. He spreads his plumage out so that there was a bright blue strip at the bottom and two blue dots on top, bouncing really close to the female bird to try to attract her as a mate. It is interesting to see how birds can show they like someone compared to us! I know if someone wore bright colors and bounced in front of me I’d kindly walk away.

2. Red-Capped Manakin Mating Dance: These birds are really light on their feet! They run sideways along the tree branches, a place called a lek, like they are moonwalking on the dance floor. It may be hard to try to dance like this bird without looking too much like a crab scuttling from side to side, but it is totally worth a shot!

3. Flamingo Mating Dance: The flamingos in this video are found in Chile, though most flamingos dance this way. They travel around in a group in the water, standing up straight like royalty, twisting their heads back and forth. At some point, some are even daring to bend down a little bit. You could tell who the leading flamingos are when the group changes the direction of their unified scuttling. I feel like it would be funny to get my friends to walk down the hall like this at school!

4. Blue-Footed Booby Mating Dance: You could say that the blue-footed booby from the Galapagos Islands is more of one for the step dances! This bird shifts its weight from side to side to show off its vibrant, blue feet. Also, if you noticed, one of the birds kept picking up a stick as part of the dance. Too bad the larger, unimpressed female rejected him.

5. And I apologize, but I had to do this for my amusement…. I mean, who doesn’t love a bird dance-off?!

I hope you enjoyed learning about the different types of dances birds can perform! So long for now and I will see you in September on Caitlin’s Corner!