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Survival of the sexiest
Country Life UK
|March 05, 2025
Birds, Sex and Beauty: The Extraordinary Implications of Charles Darwin's Strangest Idea Matt Ridley (Fourth Estate, £25)
It is neither a sneeze nor a hiss, neither a squawk nor a screech, but somewhere in between… Then, more softly but continuously, a new sound begins: “Hoo-doodle-woo-doodle-WOO-hoo”… somewhere between humming and crooning, bubbling and cooing… It’s the mating call: “Please God, bring me a mating opportunity today!”… They expand the bright red, swollen, fleshy combs over their eyes, covered with hundreds of tiny tentacles like vermillion sea anemones.’ The black-grouse lek, as described here by Matt Ridley in his fascinating new book, is one of Nature’s most captivating spectacles.
It was my good fortune to be taken to see one by Viscount Ridley several years ago—and here I should declare an interest—an experience I described in COUNTRY LIFE (
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