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From: mary@dinorah.wustl.edu (Mary E. Leibach)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: How do birds mate (at the risk of being too personal)
Keywords: the birds and the bees -- well, mostly just the birds
Message-ID: <1020@dinorah.wustl.edu>
Date: 7 Nov 89 15:35:54 GMT
References: <2918@cbnewsd.ATT.COM>
Organization: Washington University (St. Louis)
Lines: 30
In-reply-to: heneghan@cbnewsd.ATT.COM's message of 6 Nov 89 16:19:16 GMT


You are not really being too personal, Dayna and Del mate in front of
me all the time and are not the least bit concerned.  Maybe someone
else can tell you about the anatomy, I don't watch them through a
microscope.  What I can tell you is how Zebra Finches go about it.

First off, Dayna and Del meet each other when Mary buys them and takes
them home.  They play a little in their temporary cage until the big
cage Mary ordered arrives via UPS.  Then they move into the cage, and
start getting intimate.  They play together, eat together, preen each
other, sleep next to each other, etc.  Then they get serious.  They go
on a perch in the open where there is lots of room.  They may preen
briefly.  Then the male begins an excited call, and twirls his tail
(hard to describe, but you would know it if you saw it).  He hops/flys
on top of the female's back, and holds on with his feet.  With him on
top of her (cross between a dog mounting a bitch and a man riding a
horse), he mates with her.  They separate, the male hopping to a
perch, and the female straightening her feathers.  The whole thing
takes a second or two.  Del has his technique down pat, because he has
actually fertilized eggs, but he keeps tearing up the nest, she keeps
abandoning it, and someone tosses eggs.  They usually mate right when
they get up, before breakfast.

Well, now you know.  Personally, I don't think humans are the only
species that has sex for recreational purposes, I think birds,
particularly in captivity, mate for enjoyment as well as out of
instinct.  You can learn a lot from watching pet birds.  I rather
doubt a truly wild bird would mate six inches from my nose.

	-Mary