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The New Zealand stitchbird or hihi Notiomystis cincta is unique in that it has two distinct mating positions, in addition to the male standing on the female's back, as is seen in all other birds, it also copulates face‐to‐face. In this study, 43 male stitchbirds first attracted a female to their territory and supplemented their within‐pair matings by intruding into other territories and attempting forced copulations – often resulting in high levels of female harassment. I recorded the temporal variation of both attempted and successful copulations relative to the female's fertile period in order to understand the function of copulation variation in this species. Each of 105 observed copulations were classified according to whether they were: (1) within‐pair or extra‐pair, (2) forced or unforced, and (3) face‐to‐face or standing. Two copulation categories ‘within‐pair unforced standing’ (50%) and ‘extra‐pair forced face‐to‐face’ (27 …