Second Saturday

Why I like birds 

Let me start this tale with how I got into birds...

When I was younger I didn't really care too much about birds.  I was all about the mammals, especially the carnivores.  I wanted to be a zoo keeper when I was younger but then I didn't.  All I knew was I wanted to do something with mammals.  It wasn't until I got into high school that I even thought seriously about birds. My AP bio teacher was an avid bird watcher, and would talk about it sometimes.  I wanted to impress my teacher, so I decided to take up bird watching.  Turns out I actually liked bird watching a lot, so I stuck with it.  And my interest grew from there.

Now onto why I like birds...

I am reasonably sure that I want to study animal courtship/mating in the future.  I find mating rituals and behaviors fascinating, along with genital form/function and honest signals.  I also think sexual selection and evolution caused by sexual selection the bees knees.  There is no better animal (in my opinion) where all these things I love can be seen, then birds.  Some birds grow elaborate feathers to impress a mate, others mimic any sound to woo, others build, and some dance and sing.  Male birds go to many lengths to impress females, even feeding them to show that they will be good providers for future offspring.   Birds can also be very promiscuous or monogamous or some sort of combination which is fascinating.  Some females are able to select sperm from a specific male they copulated with to fertilize her eggs.   Their nests are interesting too, they can be as simple as a dent in the sound or as complicated as an giant woven apartment shared by many birds.  I don't think I could find a mammal that goes to the lengths that birds do to attract a mate.  I will add more details to this later as there are more and I'd like to get into more specifics.  But I'm lazy and looking at videos of street food vendors.