A few words on the mutual courtship dance of Silver-breasted Broadbill

[Samrat Sarkar]

The head of the bird was bright orange. The bird was perhaps eager to show to its partner how bright and colourful its body was in the background of the orange light and liver hued dry leaves. The male bird was hopping around its partner with some hay stuff in its mouth intended for building their nest.

All around the world there are a number of species of birds the females of which display the beautiful colours of their bodies to their male counterparts.M. Susan DeVries, Caitlin P. Winters and Jodie M. Jawor in their research paper in year 2014 shown that a female Northern Cardinal was singing and dancing for its male partner the same way as a male sings and dances. Here also the female OHT is displaying courtship to the male bird by successfully banking on the reddish orange colour of the sun rays and the light liver hued colour of the dry leaves. The male bird also became satisfied that it had made no mistake to choose a suitable mate. And this resulted in a successful conjugal mating season.


These are the interesting relations of the role of different lights in the forest with display activities of the birds. And the joint courtship dance of the monogamous birds like the Broadbills is not anything less interesting either.

There are more than 200 species of birds in the world which perform courtship song and dance and display other courtship activities. Some of them are polygamous and the others are monogamous. In the case of the Broadbills in the picture here we can come to some inferences based on the observations

1. I did not hear either of the birds to sing for the other though the Silver breasted Broadbills are capable of singing in a loud voice and many monogamous birds like them sing songs to attract their partners.

2. There may be many number of reasons for mutual courtship dances. It may be intended for selecting a suitable partner or may be to reinforce their conjugal relationship or may be for demarkating the area under their control. There has not been any proper research in this field so far. All the minute details of sole display or of mutual display are really very difficult to understand and the amount of information we have gathered in this field are mainly based on speculations only. There was another male bird close to this couple. The courtship dance that the male bird started displaying might be to prove to the second male bird the strength of their conjugal relationship with its partner.

3. There is a term in ornithology; CSD. Its full form is“Copulation solicitation display”. At the end of the mutual courtship dance the female bird gives a signal to the male bird. The male bird reads the signal correctly and understands that its partner now has given him permission to mount. This very signal of the female bird is known as the CSD. In the picture the female bird gives a distinct glance at its male partner after which the male bird mounts. Thus it may be concluded that this that such sideways glance of the female bird is another name of CSD.




Equipment used - Canon EOS 7D + Canon 500 f4 IS II
Place of observation -Manas National Park
Date of observation – 02.04.2018

Behind the female, the male was hopping with some nesting materials in his beak..