Stallion Encounter Part 1

The above video and the two videos below capture the drama that unfolded as we sat on a sand dune on Shackleford Banks watching the two-stallion band of feral ponies I wrote about in the two previous blog posts, see here and here. I had wanted to find this band when we set out on this particular day because I had wanted to see if the mare the lieutenant stallion had chased down the beach (see here) had rejoined his band.

When we located the band, as I had suspected, the mare was not with the band. The other mare that 12N had brought back down the beach was there. She was grazing with the band. We located the band very close to where we had seen them the first time. We sat down on a dune far enough away not to disturb them, but close enough to watch them through our binoculars, and we used the zoom lens on Bernie’s iPhone to shoot the video.
Over the course of a two-and-a-half-hour period, the following occurs, which is mostly captured on film:

1) As the five-member band consisting of three mares and the stallion, and the lieutenant stallion, graze, two new mares arrive. *Note the dark bay mare who eventually integrates into the band may be the young dark bay the stallion chased down the beach, and who we had seen arrive into the band with the pregnant bay mare the day before. I did not think they were the same dark bay horse, but upon further reflection, the behavior suggests this mare is already familiar with and affiliated with this band, so this would make sense. Or she could be a returning offspring of one of the other mares in this band. (Part 1)

2) The bay mare that does not integrate into the herd whinnies and orients to the west as she arrives. She never attempts to join the band and remains just to the east of them, grazing and remaining fairly conspicuous. The stallions never seem to notice her. While the dark bay mare moves in and among the five-member band. She greets the stallions, squeals a little, and starts grazing among the band members. (Part 1)

3) Another stallion appears on the western horizon. He has been standing there just as the mares have first arrived to our east. When the dark bay mare starts squealing as she greets the stallions in the band. The stallion on the western horizon breaks into a trot and comes towards the two-stallion band. He gets as close as he feels comfortable being and starts to graze and sniff and orient to the situation. (Part1)

4) After some time, the lieutenant stallion spots him and runs out to confront him. They greet right nostril to right nostril, posture, shove, nudge, paw, rub faces and perform the dunging ritual that stallions do to share information. The chestnut stallion kicks out and strikes at the lieutenant, but the lieutenant does not have to fight back. The lieutenant gets the approaching stallion to back off a bit, then he leaves, marking his territory some more by adding to the stud piles again and pawing. (Part 2)

5) The lieutenant stallion goes halfway back to his band and stands sentinel on a dune, splitting the rival stallion off from his band. (Part 2)

6) The lieutenant feels a need to go back and make it clear to the chestnut stallion that he must back off. He prances off, swinging his head, re-marks some of the stud piles, and re-confronts the chestnut stallion. They posture, dung and shove each other a bit more. The chestnut stallion eventually yields and turns away; after a moment or two, he walks off. The lieutenant goes back to his band and resumes grazing. (Part 3)

Stallion Encounter Part 2

Stallion Encounter Part 3

Maybe man, in all his arrogance, was not above the beast for the power of his mind like he thought he was, but was the only beast that had not been streamlined, did not know how to fit properly into his role in nature, did not know his place in the universe and how to live in harmony with his world. Perhaps he was the beast that did not understand the universal language but instead stuck blindly to the man-made languages he had learned. So impressed by his intelligence and ability to create his artificial world from nature. He has become obsessed with death because he can not stop it.

He never learned how to fully see, feel and listen like the rest. He got far too interested in just his kind and ignored all the others that made the world whole. Perhaps man is not the advanced beast he thinks he is, but the one in need of learning his place, his role, his way to be in the world.

Most men still look down on the other living plants and animals, but they are the ones who understand how to live in harmony. They are the ones that could coexist in perpetuity if it were not for man. They are the ones who understand in simple terms the importance of the one, not the self.

There are people who know this. Those who have fought convention. Those who live outside of the norm. There are cultures that stick closer to the animals, to knowledge gleaned from direct experience with nature, but they are seldom listened to by the masses. This could be the downfall of man. He is running away from nature instead of towards it. He tries to create solutions on his own instead of listening to the whole.

Man believes he has superiority over other animals, but this belief does not stop there; this paradigm leads him to hold his superiority over other men as well. The human ego steers the ship, causing wars and further destruction of nature through disregard for the whole.

This essay came to me from reflecting on watching the complex, beautiful, deeply social lives of the wild ponies on Shackleford Banks. Horses don’t need us. They need us to know who they are without us, and we need them to remind us who we should be.

For other great episodes of the Creative Spirits Unleashed Podcast click here

About 10 minutes after we had seen the mare 12N marching the bay mare back to her band (for that story read here). We saw the lieutenant stallion appear on the beach just about in the same place the mares had exited. He looked east down the beach past our boat. He was very stiff, with his head held high and his tail lifted. He flared his nostrils, sniffing the wind and continued to look intently down the beach. He whined a few times. Then he broke first into a fast walk, then a trot, then a canter, then a gallop, heading east. He was most certainly on a mission. He came charging along the beach past our boat.

That’s when we saw the younger of the two mares, the one who had arrived into this band yesterday by the side of the mare 12N had just driven back down the beach. The younger mare was standing still, her head high in the air, staring frozen at the rapidly approaching stallion.

About 50 yards out from reaching her, the lieutenant lowered and stretched out his neck and head. His ears were pinned back. His nostrils were flared, and his eyes looked shiny and filled with fury. As he approached her, he veered out slightly away from her and then turned toward her so that he was right behind her.

She lashed out with a double-barreled kick that she did not land, and then started to run down the beach in the direction the stallion had just come from. It was clear that he meant her to go in that direction. It was clear that he had come to get her to drive her home to the band. It was also fairly clear that she did not want to go with him, but had no idea what to do but run and kick out whenever she felt like he was closing in on her. Back down past our boat, they came both in a full-on gallop.

The mare popped over a downed branch, I think hoping that that might slow the stallion, but he was right behind her. Finally, as the mare ran past the place the stallion had entered the beach, he slowed to a walk, and a little further down the beach, she also pulled up to a walk. The stallion re-entered the woods. We could no longer see him from the boat. The mare stood on the beach, standing still for a long time, regaining her breath. I think she was just calming herself down. We watched her standing there for quite a while. We went below to prepare for the day, and when we came out on deck again, we looked down the beach; she was gone.

I knew where I wanted to spend the day. I wanted to find the two-stallion band and see whether both the wayward mares had been incorporated into it or had defied the band members' efforts and gone their own way. It would be an interesting day finding out.

Below is a video of a bit of the stallion setting out to get the mare, after spotting her down the beach. Unfortunately Bernie's iPhone stopped filming for a while when he must have hit the screen. He realized and was also able to capture a bit of the chase as well, which is in the second video below. 

We were just sitting on the boat, sipping our coffee and taking in the morning light, when we saw the ponies on the beach. I grabbed my binoculars and saw that it was the bleached-faced light chestnut mare from the two stallion band. She was the one who had the National Park Service 12N brand on her right hind quarter. She was walking from east to west, which meant she would pass right by us, sitting on our boat, having coffee.
12N was driving another mare along in front of her by holding her head low with her ears back and every now and then thrusting her muzzle forward as if to wave the other mare on. This behavior is known as snaking. The other mare was a bay, and I hesitantly identified her as the pregnant, bay mare we had seen arriving into this same band a few days before with a dark bay juvenile filly at her side.

They had been greeted into the band by both the stallions, the dark bay main stallion and his liver chestnut flaxen-maned lieutenant. I wrote about this in an earlier post, here, where I described the dynamics of a two-stallion band, the arrival of these mares, their acceptance into the band by the stallions, and how they stayed behind as the band drifted off.

It appeared as though the chestnut mare was marching the bay mare back to her band and returning her to their territory. Here on the hilly, forested west end of Shackleford Banks, the stallions are known to share territories a little more than is normal for wild horses and even more so than on the eastern, more open and flat end of this same island, where the stallions do defend their territories.

Even though stallions on the west end of Shackleford defend their territories from other stallions less often, they still seem fairly loyal to a location and still mark their territories with dung piles. It was to this territory of the two-stallion band that I believed the chestnut mare was marching the bay mare. Established mares often work to keep their bands together by driving wayward, less loyal mares back into the band and keeping the young ones from straying too far away.

Although I do not know the story that the humans who know her tell of 12N’s life, I can tell that she is a well-established mare who is very important to the cohesiveness and functioning of her band on the west end of Shackleford. She has the best body weight condition score of any of the ponies we have seen on the island, suggesting she is a knowledgeable long-term survivor.

Established mares are often the ones that make the decisions for their bands about where to graze and where and when to go for water. 12N and a mature dark bay mare are close to each other, and the band’s bay breeding stallion. There was a moment the other day between these two mares that demonstrated the importance of 12N’s opinion to the confidence and feeling of security of her friend, the dark bay mare.

just after the identification, arrival and greeting of the newly arrived mares, first by the lieutenant stallion who set out to meet them, as they were arriving, and then by the bay stallion as they came closer, the dark bay mare walked over to check in with 12N. She gently sniffed 12N’s flank as if to ask in horse-speak if she thought everything was ok. Then, after sniffing her, she let out a series of yawns as if now that she understood everything was fine, she could let go of tension through some big yawn releases.

After yawning, the dark bay mare followed lazily behind 12N and started to graze at her side. Neither mare bothered to greet the newly arrived mares with shared breathing. Shared breathing is when two individuals greet by blowing into each other's nostril to exchange important information. Horses usually prefer to perform this ritual of information gathering right nostril to right nostril, especially with other horses that they do not know well.

This preference is called a hemisphere lateralization preference. Like in people, the different hemispheres of the brain are specialized for different tasks and emotional uses. In horses, there is a general right-nostril preference when smelling emotionally arousing stimuli, suggesting specialized processing of sensory information.

The bay mare that was being marched down the beach by 12N did not look pleased with her. She had more of a look of surrender than peace and confidence. My thought is that this bay mare and her filly (or younger companion) are displaced mares that are not yet loyal to another band and are being claimed by the two-stallion band that 12N is an important member of.

We watched 12N and her charge until they left the beach through a tangle of low trees headed in the direction we had watched them grazing in a few days before, the area I believe to be 12N’s loosely held home territory, the one her stallions mark with their stud piles.

I took a swallow of my coffee and felt pleased with this snippet of these ponies' lives that we had just witnessed without leaving the boat. Little did I know that this was only the start of the pony drama, which would continue to unfold over the course of the day ahead. Stay tuned for what happened next.