(Yes, Ginny, the title is especially for you…)
Can’t resist borrowing the above series of pictures from my morning newspaper. (I used the camera to just snap photos from the paper spread out on the kitchen table.)
It’s courting season for the Western Capercaillie
(Lat: Tetrao urogallus, Swedish: Tjäder)
This includes territorial competition between neighbouring cocks or cocks on the same courting ground. Apparently for this cock, a human on a bike is to be regarded as an intruder as well!
At the very beginning of dawn, the tree courting begins on a thick branch of a lookout tree. The cock postures himself with raised and fanned tail feathers, erect neck, beak pointed skywards, wings held out and drooped and starts his typical aria. This consists of four parts, tapping, drum roll, cork pop and gurgling or wheezing.
(Wikipedia)
3 comments:
Love it! I think that's really funny.
not funny to me, at 8 i was attacked by a turkey gobbler and my dress shredded off me, when i was a toddler i was attacked by a rooster like this one, my daddy killed it, it belonged to my great grandmother and was mean as a snake. 2 years ago i was taking photos of a white peacock who was doing the mating dance around his lady with his tale spread, he scared me silly, he ran at me hissing, so i left. i was terrified of birds my whole life, until 2006 when i started going out on photo shoots of birds with my friend. i still dont love birds
The Capercaillie looks fairly small against the cyclist but it wouldn't do if you were the cyclist! Lucky they weren't on foot!
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