On North Seymour Island we came upon a colony of the Magnificent frigatebirds. Like voyeurs, we watched as they performed their rather comical and noisy mating rituals. These are the birds that we see performing their aerial acrobatics from our boat each day and threaten our clean laundry hung out to dry on the top deck.
Basically, the males rest on the ground—sometimes alone and sometimes in groups—displaying their inflated and glorious red gulars. Using their beaks, they drum out a pattern on their gulars that result in very rapid up and down head movements. When an eligible female flies over surveying the goods, all the males spread their wings and call out to her as if to say, “Pick me, pick me!” If the female likes a particular male, she’ll land on top of him, they’ll mate (somehow—couldn’t really see that part) and then she flies off lickety-split and maybe, never even thinks of him again.
