40 Nebraskaland • May 2024
f you've spent much time fi shing, chances are you've seen
a male bluegill guarding its spawning bed, a bowl-shaped
depression that it fans out in the lakebed using its tail.
Or numerous bluegills in a nesting colony, each guarding its
own bed.
If, instead of casting to those beds hoping to catch dinner,
you put down your rod and reel and watched for a time, you
may have seen another male bluegill approach a bed, only
to be run off by the male. Or females making their rounds,
trying to decide which male they deemed worthy of the right
to fertilize their eggs.
In 2021, I had the opportunity to witness, up close, the
next step in the spawning process, and something I would be
willing to bet few have seen: the interaction between male
and female prior to spawning.
I was snorkeling in an Elkhorn River backwater at Red
Wing Wildlife Management Area near Neligh, gathering
underwater photos for a story on the area and the aftereff ects
of the 2019 fl ood that changed the river's course (see "A River
Used to Run Through It," November 2023). In one section
of the backwater, not far from the river, I found a handful
of bluegills, most gathered in or around tangles of beaver-
chewed sticks and rushes in a pool that was no deeper than
3 or 4 feet.
In one tangle, I watched for 6 minutes as a 7- or 8-inch long
male and a female two-thirds its size, circled the nest, rubbing
against each other, with the female occasionally tipping on
her side. At the time, I had no idea what I was watching. And
I'm a nose breather and, as such, not a very good diver, so I
stood to clear my mask and my nose and moved on in search
of more photos.
I'm also blind without my glasses, and don't swim with a
corrected mask, so it wasn't until I pulled the photos up on
my computer that I could see the eggs beneath that fi sh, and
two others I'd photographed. These fi sh were on spawning
beds that looked nothing like others I'd seen.
So what were the fi sh doing? A little Googling found the
answer, described by Vernon Lee Avila in A Field Study of
Nesting Behavior of Male Bluegill Sunfi sh, published in The
American Midland Naturalist by the University of Notre
Dame in 1978.
"Spawning was accomplished in a manner typical of all
centrarchids. Once the female is settled in the nest the male
swims close beside her. They face in the same direction and
circle together in the nest, with the male on the outside
Courting
Bluegills
Story and photos by Eric Fowler
I
A fi rst-hand account
of this rare spectacle
