relatively short absence when one bird
returns after a foraging trip. Strikingly, the duration and intensity of these
greeting displays is closely tied to the
length of time the pair members have
been apart.
One expert, Bryan Nelson, calls
the North Atlantic gannets’ meeting
ceremony “one of the finest displays
in the bird world.” If you visit a gannet colony, such as Cape St. Mary’s in
Newfoundland, you can see it easily.
As one member of the pair returns to
its partner at the nest, the two birds
stand upright, breast to breast with
outstretched wings, their beaks pointing skyward. In a frenzy of excitement
they clash their bills together, each
intermittently sweeping its head down
over the neck of its partner, calling
raucously all the time.
Under normal circumstances this
greeting display lasts a minute or two,
but Sarah Wanless, who studied gannets at Bempton Cliffs, in northern
England, observed a particularly prolonged instance. At one of the nests
she was regularly checking, the female
of the pair disappeared, leaving the
male to care for the tiny chick alone,
which, against all odds, he did. One
evening, the female returned after a
remarkable five-week absence, and
luckily Sarah was there to witness it.
To her amazement, the two birds performed an intense greeting ceremony
that lasted a full 17 minutes! Because
the greeting ceremonies of humans
(like kissing and hugging) are also
more elaborate the longer the participants have been apart, it is tempting to
assume that birds experience similar
pleasurable emotions on being reunited.
Our best hope for understanding
the kinds of feeling birds might experience is through a combination of
careful behavioral and physiological
studies that measure responses to what
are likely to be emotional situations,
such as greeting displays, allopreening, and separation of partners. Physiological measures include changes in
the heart rate and breathing rate, the
release of neurohormones from the
birds’ brains, and changes in brain
activity, as visualized by scanning
technology. None of this is easy, and
at the present time cannot be done on
free-living birds. Yet I imagine that
in the not-too-distant future, it will
be possible to measure at least some
of these responses in wild birds. My
prediction is that when we do, we will
discover that birds have an emotional
life more dynamic than that which we
have so far imagined.
Tim Birkhead is a professor of behavioral
ecology at the University of Sheffield. This
essay is adapted from his new book Bird
Sense: What It’s Like to Be a Bird
(Walker and Company).
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