{"id":20585,"date":"2017-05-22T09:32:54","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T16:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=20585"},"modified":"2017-05-22T12:41:08","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T19:41:08","slug":"wanton-spotty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=20585","title":{"rendered":"Wanton spotty"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Spotted Sandpiper is widespread along the shores of lakes, ponds, and rivers. It also has the unusual characteristic of a sexual role reversal. The female is larger, sexually aggressive, and polyandrous — that is, it mates with multiple\u00a0males, each of which is then left to incubate and brood (what it thinks are) its own chicks.<\/p>\n

A year ago, I posted a picture, sandpiper piping<\/a>, of a spotty that was calling and strutting. I didn’t know what was going on; now, I do. It was a female making an aggressive sexual display towards a nearby male. This last week, I watched this interaction repeatedly.<\/p>\n

Having arrived at a dock, a female\u00a0repeatedly harassed two males. They pretty much ignored her. Here, the\u00a0female performs her courtship display on tiptoes with wings and tail outstretched.
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Such a display is directed towards a particular male and accompanied by a\u00a0weet-weet<\/em> call.
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“No, no, please don’t leave —\u00a0weet-weet.”<\/em>
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Finally, the two males flew off. This is the female chasing after them.
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  The Spotted Sandpiper is widespread along the shores of lakes, ponds, and rivers. It also has the unusual characteristic of a sexual role reversal. The female is larger, sexually aggressive, and polyandrous — that is, it mates with multiple\u00a0males, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20585"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20609,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20585\/revisions\/20609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}