What do wild animals do on Valentine's Day?
In February, it is mating season for mallards, common toads, grey partridges and foxes. Wild animals celebrate their very own Valentine's Day.
Mating season in February
For mallards, common toads, grey partridges and foxes it is now mating season. “In the forest, at the field's edge or even in the park, February is the time when, with a little luck, you can hear the hoarse bark of a fox ready to mate,” says Jenifer Calvi of the Deutsche Wildtier Stiftung.
Grey partridge cocks also compete in February on farmland for the favour of a hen. Common toads go in search of a mate in damp weather. And brown hares box each other before mating takes place.
Mallards in the courtship period
For mallards, February is the last month of the courtship season. By mutually nodding their heads, both signal interest in one another. By April, ducklings will have arrived. More on the topic of wildlife and the animal world.
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More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
