Mildly concerning betta "activity"

About a month into getting my new male betta, as I was feeding him I noticed he started doing something really weird with his gills that kinda freaked me out. At first I thought he went to the top and started violently splashing, making a bunch of bubbles spew out so suddenly I thought he got caught in the bubble filter (which is right next to him). Then he did it again, but this time I saw it was coming directly from his gills- 100% not the bubbler. I know they have lungs and breathe air sometimes, but that was a freakish amount of bubbles coming out that were the size of his head. It looked like he somehow managed to breathe the surface air and let it out through his gills at the same time in some scary party trick.
Is this a normal thing in bettas? It was a lot of bubbles coming from his gills at one time and it just really didn't look right. Any ideas on what happened?

 

No ideas, don't recall i have seen my bettas do this before. Any way you can get a video of it?

 

No ideas, don't recall i have seen my bettas do this before. Any way you can get a video of it?

No, he's only ever did it that one time. It's mainly just him at the surface blowing an absurd amount of bubbles from his gills.

 

No, he's only ever did it that one time. It's mainly just him at the surface blowing an absurd amount of bubbles from his gills.

Is he blowing the bubbles close together in the same spot in the tank?

 

Is he blowing the bubbles close together in the same spot in the tank?

Yes, he stayed in the same spot and blew out a lot of bubbles that came out all at once.

 

Yes, he stayed in the same spot and blew out a lot of bubbles that came out all at once.

Then it sounds like he was blowing a bubble nest. It's perfectly normal behaviour for a mature male betta.

 

If you could post a pic of the bubbles, that would help. If the bubbles stayed at the top of the tank in a clump, then that is a bubble nest. If the bubbles all popped right away, that was his way of doing a sort of air release. He was releasing some internal air. The first time I ever saw my betta do that, it alarmed me as well. I don't know if they do that to get their swim bladder right, or if they took in too much air and had to suddenly release, but I have seen it happen in more than one of my bettas.