SPRING has sprung and love is in the air – for Ryedale’s wild birds at least.

Very few eggs will have been laid yet, but March is the month when finding a mate is top priority. That’s what all the singing is about of course.

Sometimes it’s easy to assume that all birds go about it in the traditional way.

We’ve all seen it on telly - brightly coloured males strutting their stuff, shouting their heads off and basically doing all that they can to impress the females, who actually do the choosing.

The canniest females get the fittest males, but in the end everyone is paired off, builds a nest and lives happily ever after.

Some colonial nesting birds take fidelity to the extreme by meeting up with the same partner at the nest-site every spring, having not seen each other all year.

The gannets, puffins and guillemots of Bempton Cliffs fit into this category. Mute swans and bullfinches actually stick together as married couples all year round.

Yes, the monogamous state of affairs is what goes on from 92 per cent of bird species, but from me it’s the remaining eight per cent that are really interesting.

Red grouse are familiar birds of the heather moors of Ryedale, but we used to have another related species breeding in our region as well.

Nowadays the black grouse’s nearest range to us is in the Yorkshire Dales where their spectacular mating displays can still be seen.

All the male black grouse in an area get together in an “arena” and put on a competitive display called a lek, with an audience of interested females.

The top two or three males eventually get to mate with all the females and all the others go without.

After all their efforts, the males are exhausted of course so leave all the ensuring nursery work to the females.

The ruff is wading bird which also uses the lek system but some male birds have found a way to cheat.

Most male ruffs have an ornate and colourful collar of feathers for use in the lekking displays (hence the name) but one or two don’t.

They look remarkably like the female of the species (called a reeve) which allows them to infiltrate the audience of the lek alongside the females.

When the proper males are all posturing, leaping and fighting and suitably distracted, the lady-boy ruffs take the opportunity to sneak in and mate with any interested females in the audience.

I wish we could see this ruff soap-opera going on in Ryedale, but their nearest breeding area to us is in East Anglia.

Ruffs do turn up here on migration though; only last month they were seen at Filey Dams and Wheldrake Ings near Pocklington.

Of course, it’s not just male birds that are prone to cheating. Everyone is familiar with the female cuckoo’s cheeky get-someone-else-to-look-after-your-kids trick.

But, did you know that some other birds do the same thing, not with foster parents of another species, but others of their own kind – and it’s happening in your garden.

House sparrows, starlings and pigeons are common culprits, with females often dropping a sneaky egg into a neighbour’s nest to save on their own house work.

Let’s finish with the hero of the piece though - the wren.

Male wrens are polygamous, defending a territory with up to four mates.

He single-handedly builds all four nests and, unlike some species where the male abandons the female to do all the childcare, he sticks around and helps to feed all his offspring.

Female wrens can lay up to eight eggs so that’s 32 hungry mouths to fill.