The Surprising Sex life of a Dunnock

One of the new hobbies I’ve taken up in the last few years has been nature and bird watching, to accompany this I’ve bought a few reference books, you know the sort, the ones that appeared on other people’s bookshelves as I was growing up, like my nanna, actually.. RSPB British birds, that kind of thing.

As well as taking the book out with me when I go walking, it’s been relaxing to read it, and also read it to my fiance Christelle. she’s been more interested in birds that I have thought, and I tentatively shared with her originally that I was beginning to like this slow hobby.

But recently we’ve been reading together the different bird species in the UK so that we can go walking together and identify some. San Diego has very different birds. So

So far I’ve read to her some of my favourites or the more interesting ones, like kingfishers, owls, goldcrests, Swans, blue tits, finches etc

And many of them are very similar, in the ‘breeding’ section. There’s a courtship, female and male make nest, either or both incubate, either feed and then young fledge a few days or weeks later. Same for every bird I’d read so far.

So, today I had no great expectations for the dunnock. Small grey/blue bird that my only knowledge of really was that it was prime nest material for the devious cuckoo.

Dunnocks, it transpires practice polyandry and polygamy.

Dunnocks are the promiscuous of the UK bird life.

Who knew???

I certainly didn’t…

Clearly when the UK birds were deciding their mating patterns, the dunnocks were like ‘sod that, were doing our own thing to survive and reproduce’

Look again, that little brown ish bird that hangs around with sparrows but hops along the ground…it’s hiding a bit of secret on its ‘relationship status’ more to the point it looks like either male or female it could be in multi relationship, that it seems like, works ok for it

The thought of promiscuous dunnocks has made me smile all day, so I thought I’d share it with you. Maybe it’s a reminder to me to keep looking for the surprising stories in what appears grey, small and insignificant. M

Maybe it’s about life and the world being full of surprises waiting to be encountered and explored. Maybe it’s just that I found the surprising sex life of a dunnock funny today was all it was. Sometimes the world has fun for us in places we didn’t realise.

Even the writers of RSPB birds think so too.