One of the most romantic Broadway songs (in my mind anyway) is the “Tonight Duet” from "West Side Story."
"Only you, you're the only thing I'll see, forever.
In my eyes, in my words and in everything I do, Nothing else but you, Ever."
Around Valentines’ Day, people often ask me if birds mate for life — is it “true love forever?"
There is no one answer.
Some birds don’t even form pair bonds.
Of the birds that do, there are many variations in behavior.
Romantics will be happy to learn that some birds mate for life.
Although it is difficult to document, researchers believe that some large birds: cranes, eagles, swans and geese, stay together until one of the pair dies.
And some birds seem to reunite with the same mate each year.
Undying love?
Or maybe it’s that birds have a strong loyalty to their nesting territory.
They return year after year to the same site.
When the male and female have an overwhelming drive to nest in the same place, it’s practical to remate. At least that’s one theory.
A majority of birds that migrate will keep the same mate all summer.
This is called one-season monogamy, and the pair may raise one or several families and then go their separate ways.
And know that what we humans call “cheating,” is actually rather common.
Bluebirds and wrens change partners frequently.
A male wren might mate with a female, and even before the baby birds from that nest have fledged, he has flown off with another female and has set up nest-keeping with her.
This arrangement must be tiring for the male bird for while he has the exhausting task of courting his second mate, he still does his share of rearing the young from the first.
We humans tend to think that birds that switch mates are somehow rotten lowdown cads and that those the mate for life the true Valentines.
But we must remember: they are birds, not humans.
But no matter the pair-bonding arrangement, courtship feeding, behavior in which the males brings food (and sometimes flowers) to their mates, helps the birds fulfill their biological duty to reproduce so their species will survive.
Clearly ritual feeding and gift giving keeps a pair together.
Love birds (and many other creatures) seem to require a romantic gesture from time to time.
Happy Valentines Day!
