Rooster behaviour before a fight

I know that Penguin and Buffy love to fight each other, and I've been watching both of them for a while now and I've noticed a particular sequence of events that occur before they start to fight.

It tends to happen in this order:
Flapping/Crowing
Chest Puff
Nonchalantly walking closer
Crowing

After seeing this occur numerous times, I think this is what they are trying to do




Flapping/Crowing
When Penguin or Buffy first make eye contact with each other, they go quite still and start flapping their wings and then crowing.

 To me, I think it is their way to garner attention. Flap flap - didn't you see me? Flap flap - still didn't see me? CROW! - I bet you heard me now! I also think that they do flapping to make themselves look a bit bigger. Which leads to the next item.

Chest Puff

Never has a chest puff been this obvious as the one Penguin is doing! I can only think of one reason for this, for them to look as big and macho as possible.

They also stand differently. Usually they stand with their wings tucked up along their side, but when the opposition is spotted, they stand more erect (probably why the chest puffs out) and the wings drop down towards their legs. Again I think this is an intimidation stance, just a bit of a warning for you.

I've seen photo's of chickens in magazines and I've noticed that the roosters in those photos tend to stand with their wings hanging down and I always wondered why they stood like that. Now I think I know, that pesky photographer would have been an intruder and they would have been warning them to stay away!

Buffy does the exact same thing. I managed to capture the before and after Buffy spotted Penguin.

Before spotting Penguin, standing normally.

 Enemy spotted!

Nonchalantly walking closer
Now this is a specialty of Buffy and only occasionally happens the other way around. Once Penguin has been spotted, Buffy will slowly walk closer to Penguin (who will still be flapping and crowing and puffing away) looking at anything except Penguin. It's almost a "la la la...I don't see you...la la la".

To add to the pretence that he's not paying attention to Penguin, suddenly every little rock and stick is something worth pecking at and picking up, even dried up leaves are suddenly "tasty"

Here's both of them pretending to pick up "tasty" sticks. Generally Buffy makes his way to Penguin, Penguin generally stays where he is.

Crowing
 It's usually at this point where Penguin will crow and Buffy will launch an attach whilst he is crowing. SNEAKY! Both of them will crow during this whole process, but Penguin especially loves his voice, so he will crow many more times than Buffy.

The Attack
I haven't managed to get many photo's of them fighting, mainly because I'm busy trying to break it up and stop them from injuring each other. Most of those photos are really blurry anyway.

My roosters tend to fight in this fashion:
 They will usually try to bite each other around the head area. Penguin has lost quite a bit of his beard due to his fights with Buffy, and Buffy has had many injuries to his wattles. They will also try to spur each other, I call them Ninja kicks as they get airborne and deliver a really strong kick! I usually stick my foot in between them when they fight and I get to feel the power behind those kicks! Especially Buffy, who has short legs, but a really strong kick!

In fight mode, they crouch down and the neck flare happens. Again, I think, to make them look more intimidating.

 I don't know if this is the normal behaviour for all roosters. It's just what I've noticed with our two.
I always find the part where Buffy takes great interest in sticks, leaves or dirt extremely amusing. It's also a great cue for me to pick one of them up to move them further away from each other.

Let me know if you found this interesting!