How do Eagles mate? How do they choose and attract a mate? Let’s Know!
Eagles find a mate after thorough evaluations and tests considering a lot of characteristics. They are monogamous birds, and so they mate for life.
Mating in eagles is the pairing of a male and a female eagle for life, that is by forming a lifetime bonding.
After they have found a mate, during the breeding season they will perform a lot of courtship behaviors and will soon copulate by rubbing their cloaca against each other.
And as a result due to rubbing, a stimulation will occur causing the sperm of the male eagle to get transferred to the reproductive chamber of the female eagle where fertilization of the eggs will occur.
Copulation that is by rubbing their cloacas together and as a result inseminating the female by the male eagle usually occurs on a thick tree branch or in most cases in their nest.
During copulation, it has been noticed that the male perches (sits) on top of the female. The female will then move her tail feathers to the side thus exposing her sensitive and swelled cloaca for the male eagle to rub his cloaca against hers, leading to insemination.
Let’s learn more about this in detail. So let’s get started…
How do eagles choose and attract a mate?
First of all, before mating, they need to find a potential mate with whom they will be spending the rest of their life. And, this happens when an eagle reaches about 4 to 5 years of age when it becomes sexually mature and ready to breed.
Both males and females start to find potential mates. Just like most of the other organisms of the Animal Kingdom, females eagles too consider a lot of characteristics in choosing their male partner.
Males approach females as the females try to call for all of the potential males to choose the best one.
Female eagles make weak-sounding calls that are characterized by a series of high-pitched whistling or piping notes just in order to attract and call potential mates to their place.
From the many of the males approaching her, she looks them over quite well and then chooses only one of them as a potential faithful mate after conducting some vigorous evaluations.
She evaluates the males in order to check if the male is fit for being a potential mating partner.
She does so by checking if the male is healthy, strong, good at getting food, caring, territorial, and defensive. But, the exact way of how she does the check and what very exactly she looks for in her potential mate is still controversial.
Whatever may be the cause, it is very much sure that just like other animals of the animal kingdom, eagles also do follow various mate-selection courtship rituals, and researchers don’t have the exact definition of those courtship rituals.
For those who are new to this topic, I would like to clear that courtship in animals is their type of behavior by which different species select their partners for reproduction.
So, in eagles, it is to be noticed that it’s usually the males that initiate the courtship behavior and approach the females with many proposals, and it’s then the turn of the female to accept or reject the proposal based on his performance.
One of the well-known courtship behavior seen in Bald Eagles is their “cartwheel courtship flight.”
In this kind of courtship behavior, two bald eagles are known to fly up high in the air, lock their talons, and then get into a cartwheel-like spin up in the air.
This cartwheel courtship flight looks very beautiful with their wings being outstretched, and as do the cartwheel-like spin the birds begin to fall toward the ground, breaking apart at the last minute.
How do eagles mate? Let’s Know
After they have found a potential mate then they will pair for life and will mate every year during the breeding season.
The breeding season may differ from species to species and from location to location due to the varied environmental factors.
They may choose to mate when returning from their migratory journeys, or when it’s their time to mate in the breeding season just a few months after returning from their migratory journeys.
Before it’s time to mate, they will show various courtship behaviors. The cartwheel courtship flight is the most popular in Bald eagles.
Some of the other notable courtship behaviors include nest-building, sitting together on the same branch lying close to each other, touching and clasping each other’s bills, and cleaning each other’s feathers with their beak.
And when it’s the time to mate, both the female and the male may come under the powerful influence of sex hormones and will behave instinctively in distinct ways indicating that they are sexually stimulated.
During this time the cloacal openings of both the male and female eagles swell, protruding slightly outside their bodies.
And, as they get highly sexually stimulated they start to feel frisky and as a result, they start to rub their swollen cloacas together.
As a result of rubbing their swollen cloacas together, friction on the glandular skin of the cloacas resultantly sends signals through the nervous system resulting in ejaculation of sperm from the cloaca of the male to inside the female.
So, the male’s sperm gets deposited into the female’s cloaca, where it travels up the chamber to fertilize the egg. This is how mating occurs in eagles.
And then after mating, they will lay eggs just 5 to 10 days after their successful mating takes place.
Do eagles mate for life and remain faithful to one mate?
Yes, eagles are monogamous birds, and they are part of 90% of the bird species that are monogamous in nature.
They are known to have the same mating and breeding pairs year after year and so they are said to be faithful to one mate.
It has been seen that in eagles after a breeding pair is once established they will meet their partner every year during the breeding season, and for the rest of the time of the year they stay all alone.
Here, in the case of eagles, it’s rare to witness any cheat and divorce cases from their mating partners.
However, it is also to be noticed here that if a mating pair has repeatedly failed in breeding attempts then they may not stay together, and so will soon separate and look for new mates to form a new mating pair.
In eagles, a mating pair will make a strong bond, and this bonding will last from one nesting season to one breeding season to several such seasons and till the whole life without any doubts.
It has been noticed that eagles are not only sexually monogamous, but are also socially monogamous.
And it is also important to note here that the chances are very very rare for adult eagles to stay single if their mate dies. They will find a new mate after the death of the old mate, and soon will start living together in the same territory.
We have a whole dedicated article here about this topic. Go, READ: Do eagles mate for life? What happens when their mate dies?
Biology of Mating in Eagles & Their Mating Facts
Mating simply means to make a partner, and here in the case of eagles, it means making lifetime partners as they are monogamous birds.
Mating doesn’t mean sexual reproduction. As per the biological difference, it means the pairing of opposite-sex for the purposes of sexual reproduction.
So, mating is just the way or phenomenon that causes sexual reproduction. So, it is just one of the prominent ways that lead to sexual reproduction, and thus fertilization and the birth of the offspring thereafter, and so the continuation of the generation resultantly.
So, it’s for mating purposes that eagles show a variety of courtship behaviors to have a mate and stay together thereafter.
They form a lifetime pairing and that pair reunites during the breeding season when they show their love, care, dominancy, and defensiveness for each other.
Just like the other birds, the male eagles too need to be better prepared to treat their females properly. And this is also one of the reasons for which the female eagle has chosen her mate.
Courtship in eagles is the behavior that is intended to attract a mate by causing various vocal calls, and visuals activities or expressions.
And, as mating occurs, that is when they get their partner or reunite during the breeding season, sooner or later copulation occurs.
And this is when during copulation a male eagle rubs his cloaca against his mate’s cloaca and passes his sperm from his cloaca to hers leading to fertilization of the egg.
Within a matter of days, the female will lay eggs, and the mating pair (both mother and father) will show their contribution towards the survival, growth, and rearing of the eaglets (baby eagles) from the time the female has laid eggs to the time of hatching and growth of the young eaglets.
So, the mating pair will bring food for each other and the eaglets, defend their territories, care for each other and the eaglets, build and renovate their nests, and also in teaching the eaglets various day-to-day life lessons.
So, mating in eagles not only includes forming a faithful bond by pairing with a mate, but also to fulfill each other’s responsibilities by caring for each other, defending each other, reproducing their eaglets, and fulfilling their day-to-day life activities together for their whole life as a lifetime sincere pair.