We humans in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania hear the courtships of several kinds of male animals in the woods through the year. Each species has its time of courting every year, and there is limited overlapping, allowing us to enjoy each courtship as it occurs.
As might be expected, there is little courting during winter. But members of each pair of great horned owls hoot to each other as part of their courtship in the woods during December. That loud, deep hooting frightens some people. And in January, pairs of red foxes bark hoarsely to each other, bringing a bit of the wild to those who hear the barking and know what animals are doing it.
As the amount of daylight each succeeding day gets longer and temperatures rise during February and March, male American woodcocks start their courtship displays each dusk during those months and through April. Each male starts his display by standing on a bare patch of soil in a clearing in or near a woodland and repeatedly utters a hiccupping sound for about a minute. Then he takes off in spiral flight upward while his wings twitter rhythmically. When he reaches the zenith of his climb skyward, he utters musical notes vocally that tumble to the ground, soon followed by the bird himself to that same spot of bare ground. Then he repeats the courtship again, and again, until hunger or females willing to mate break his concentration.
Tufted titmice and northern cardinals begin singing enthusiastically on their nesting territories during warm February afternoons. The titmice seem to sing "Peter, Peter, Peter" while the cardinals loudly exclaim "cheer, cheer, what cheer".
Wood frogs are awakened from hibernation in leaf piles on forest floors by warm, spring rain and melting snow early in March. They hop across soggy leaf carpets on woodland floors to vernal ponds where hundreds of males croak hoarsely, particularly on rainy nights, to invite females of their kind into the water to spawn. For a few days the wood frogs spawn thousands of eggs, then leave the pools to live in the leafy carpets and hunt invertebrates through spring and summer.
By the end of March or early in April, thousands of male spring peepers and American toads congregate in wetlands and the shallows of ponds to peep and trill respectively, creating a din that can be heard by us for some little distance. The peepers and toads are most active calling during rains and at night. Females of these amphibian species hear the peeping and trilling and join the males in the water to spawn. And some people go out of their way to hear the beautiful, vernal music of these amphibians.
Ruffed grouse and wild turkeys begin courting in local woodlands in April. Male grouse hop onto fallen logs in the woods and beat their wings together in front of themselves, making series of muffled booming sounds from the air being forced from between the wings. We feel those thumps more than hear them. Female grouse go to the males of their choice to mate with them.
Tom turkeys gobble loudly to announce their presence and to invite hen turkeys to mate with them. We can hear that wild gobbling for some distance through the woods.
Every evening from late in April through May and June, male whip-poor-wills loudly chant their name when the last daylight is drained from the woods. This, too, is a wild sound and we hear these birds more often than we see them.
And from late in April through May, June and into July, several kinds of small birds that winter in Central and South America are singing in our woods to establish nesting territories. Some of those neotropical birds are Wood thrushes, red-eyed vireos, ovenbirds and scarlet tanagers. Their songs, particularly those of the thrushes are beautiful to hear.
By the end of July, through August, September and into October, male true katydids stridulate from the tree tops in the woods to attract mates to them for breeding. Each male uses a file and scraper on his wings to make that mechanical sound that seems to say Katydid. At dusk and into the night the katydids call mechanically, night after night, until a heavy frost finally kills them sometime in October. Then the woods are quiet again until the horned owls begin hooting to each other by the end of November.
When in local woodlands, listen for these audible examples of courting. They certainly liven a woods and make it more interesting.
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