Cardinal Love Kiss?

[jjencek]

I have had two cardinals for about 2 months. They showed no interest in each other until last night. They kept "dancing together" for two hours what I assumed was a mating dance.

But weird thing happened three times. They locked their jaws together, held it for a while and then continued swimming around each other.

I searched the forums and found no mention of this behavior. Has anybody seen it? I do have a mp4 video of it, but don't know how to attach it to this thread.

 

[evolved]

You were watching 2 males fighting.

 

[Fishkeeper44]

They are fighting

 

[jjencek]

They had me fooled. For over two hours there were swimming around each other displaying their sides and it looked like synchronized swim without any aggression. Only when one of them tried to be very close parallel to the other the "jaw holding" happened. I figured one of them was a female and she was not ready yet. Oh well - so no babies and more fights on the horizon. Bummer.