animal behavior | CutterLight

**Otter Pile** *Chignik Lake, Alaska* *1/2/17*

Red Foxes tussle, nip and bark at each other. A Brown Bear might literally rip the face off a rival in a dispute over fishing and mating rights. Even cute little Black-capped Chickadees and Redpolls sometimes aggressively gape at each other and might engage in a quick peck to establish pecking order.

I suppose there are times when River Otters squabble, but in years of observing them at the lake, we never saw anything more than a look of envy cast from one otter toward another. (The coveting occurred over an exceptionally toothsome flounder one lucky fellow came up with.) Mostly, otters are the social goofballs of the four-legged world – rolling in snow, piling atop each other, sliding over ice and snow on sleek bellies, crowding together four-heads-at-a-time popping up from a hole in the ice, chasing each other in jaunty little parades as they scoot up and down the waterway. Maybe it was the Chignik’s abundant supply of fish that allowed for such conviviality. Whatever the reason, it was our observation that these inquisitive, cheerful beings simply like each other. And we think there’s a lesson in that for the rest of us.

Red-billed Chough, Mongolia. This was one among about a dozen choughs in an open field, gathered around the remains of one of their own – feathers, blood. It appeared that a raptor had made a kill; and the choughs were holding a funeral service.

I must’ve been around 13 years old, walking up the Route 322 hill to my summertime job at Martin’s Exxon Plant when I came upon a stunningly bright Indigo Bunting hovering and circling madly back on forth from nearby brush to the shoulder of the road. There on the stony berm, lifeless, was a brown bird of similar size and shape. His mate. The victim of an automobile – most of which, in this man’s opinion, are permitted to travel far too fast for anyone’s safety and sanity… this unending modern obsession with “getting somewhere.” I digress.

*Male and female Indigo Buntings. Plate by Louis Agassiz Fuertes in Birds of America (1917) edited by Thomas Gilbert Pearson (1873-1943) et al.*

It was my first encounter with the deeply rooted connection – emotions – birds can feel for one another. Fearing the frantic male’s behavior would result in him joining his mate as a victim of the traffic whizzing by, I picked her up and placed her in an open area in the brush away from the highway. So that he could mourn more safely.

As years went by I witnessed other examples of similar behavior among various species of birds: crows, magpies, a pair of Narcissus Flycatchers – the one fallen and the one who would not leave his or her mate’s or offspring’s side. A group of Magpies that would not leave an injured member of the flock. A family of Ravens appearing to search for a child that had gone missing.

But the behavior of these Red-billed Choughs was a first for me: not merely a pair of birds bonded through nesting and breeding, but a small flock, gathered on the ground, unwilling to leave a fallen brother or sister. I wish I had thought to make a video record of the event.

On the other side of the rock the chough in the above photograph is perched upon was a jumble of feathers, bony, disembodied feet, blood. The remains of a friend, a loose circle of other choughs pacing solemnly around those remains. I have since wondered what, if anything, the bird in the photo’s perch on the rock, slightly above the others, may have indicated about its status.