Fabio, the zoo's male bufflehead, is getting quite a lot of play this mating season. Photo by Sylvie McNamara.
“Veronica flaps back and forth on the water, beating against the surface, flipping her little fins and shaking her butt, which sprays water everywhere. I am all wet, even though I’m standing in the walkway behind a guardrail. She seems to be running on the surface of the water. An absolute nutcase. Some of the rowdiest behavior I’ve ever seen.”
According to the ducks’ keeper, Jen Ferraro, there’s a backstory here, a drama that’s been consuming the aviary for weeks: “So, Betty keeps trying to entice Fabio, but Fabio’s not interested in her—Fabio is very interested in Veronica, but Veronica’s been playing hard to get.” For a while, Veronica kept Fabio on the back burner. When he would try to flirt , Veronica would refuse to acknowledge his advances, but she’d also chase Betty off whenever she got too close. Then Fabio’s fortunes shifted.
The blue-winged teals are doing some kind of convoluted sex dance, and the male ruddy ducks poke their tails into the air to catch the ladies’ eyes. Ferraro points to an unassuming brown duck—a wigeon—which apparently flirts by demonstrating its swimming prowess. “Wigeons will quite literally kick everyone out of the pool,” Ferraro says. “I’ll walk in and see all the ducks around the edge just watching, waiting for them to finish.
So they had a fling but the ruddy quail-dove still prefers the females? “Yes. Rocky—he’s a little socially awkward. He’s a little much. He just wants to have friends.”Of the zoo’s three aviaries, the Prairie Pothole was the first to be struck by mating madness, and Coffee Farm will be next: So far, some catbirds have gotten interested in each other, and there’s a pair of Baltimore orioles staking out territory to nest.
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