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Solly Mack

(90,780 posts)
Sun May 13, 2012, 12:49 AM May 2012

Duck, duck...

Grackle (boat-tailed)









Female








Male/Female


Lake Charles, LA. 2012

The Boat-tailed Grackle has an odd mating system: harem defense polygyny. Females cluster their nests, and the males compete to defend the entire colony and mate there. The most dominant male gets most of the copulations in a system similar to that used by many deer. But all is not as simple as it seems. Although the dominant male may get up to 87% of the copulations at a colony, DNA fingerprinting shows that he actually sires only about 25% of the young in the colony. Most of the young are fathered by noncolony males away from the colonies.





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Duck, duck... (Original Post) Solly Mack May 2012 OP
Philandering little devils, aren't they? NV Whino May 2012 #1
and vicious. Solly Mack May 2012 #2
Poor guy NV Whino May 2012 #3
He looks pretty mad in that first shot - TBF May 2012 #4

Solly Mack

(90,780 posts)
2. and vicious.
Sun May 13, 2012, 04:29 AM
May 2012

The 2nd and 3rd photos show the loser in a fight. It was 2 on 1 in the rain. They were fighting in the grass and in the trees. Poor guy just got his little feathered fanny kicked.


This is what he looked like when he first got away. Shaking off the water and licking his wounds.



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