Romance Lives

Photographs and Words Nick Sidle

Photographs – Great Tit, Paris major, Battan Forest, Glen Convinth, Inverness-shire, Highland Scotland

Great Tits are birds that form strong pair bonds that may last for far more than just one breeding season. Starting from this, a team from Oxford University set out to look at competing priorities in the birds’ behaviour, specifically if a male has to choose between staying with his mate or getting to a food source, which comes first? Their results were published in the journal Current Biology

Experimental Evidence that Social Relationships Determine Individual Foraging Behaviour

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(15)01306-8

and show that it is the relationship that comes first or, as it is put more eloquently on the Oxford University web site, that “birds choose love over food”

Oxford University – Wild birds choose love over food

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-11-13-wild-birds-choose-love-over-food

So, the age of romance is not entirely gone and, however valid an explanation of which strategy offers the best survival and evolutionary advantages may be, ultimately all that is saying is that love is worth it.

Photograph – Great Tit, Paris major, Glen Convinth, Inverness-shire, Highland Scotland