Friday bird blogging

Not my birds, today....but I thought I would share this clip from David Attenborough's The Life of Birds.

This is a QuickTime clip of a lekking Superb Lyrebird, from Southern Australia. Lek describes a mating system in which males call and display their plumage in order to attract females, often in an arena scratched out on the ground, or sometimes perched in trees. Sometimes it is done competitively (lots of males within sight of each other), in other cases the males are solitary. Lots of different birds (and apparently even some mammals) use this mating system, from the grouse and peacock to the kakapo (a flightless parrot from New Zealand).