"There's this certain rain forest bird," Dominic (12) told me the other night about the National Geographic film, Earth. "And the male, he spends a long time cleaning his room. He, like, scrapes all the branches with leaves, and kind of sweeps the floor. Then he stands in the middle of his clean room and sings for the female to come in. Well, she comes, and she stands on a branch outside, and the male does this crazy dance for her. He moves his head back and forth and makes his feathers all big, and he struts around and around like that."Dominic was laughing while he was telling it, so I knew it had to be pretty funny.
"And the male just keeps dancing, and the female pretty much ignores him. Until after a while, she just flies off. Like he wasn't impressed at all. Can you believe that?"
That was when I started laughing. "You know?" I told him. "I kind of can."
(The picture is the real deal: a male Superb Bird of Paradise from Papua New Guinea.)
2 comments:
LOVE your son's reaction! LOL! It takes a lot to impress a woman of any species.
If he loved that part, you should rent him Dave Attenbourough's BBC version of the Birds of Paradise. I showed this one in a Wildlife Behavior class I taught when I was a professor and these birds had even the college kids rolling on the floor.
Ha ha ha ha! I love this! And you know what? I CAN believe it, too! :-)
Post a Comment