Dude, she's just not that into you!

It occurred to me that I don't think I've ever blipped a Boat-tailed Grackle, which seems an egregious oversight.  Grackles are endlessly entertaining birds, viewed by some as pests, but viewed by me as full of personality.  As I was walking along a lake today, I came across a large group of grackles - the females were all on the bank, gathering nesting material while the males were strutting their stuff, singing, and generally being very flirty.  The females were having none of ANY of the males.  

This photo was taken just after the male (he's the much-bigger, iridescent black one) flew in and landed next to the female (she's the small brown one).  He puffed himself all up and made overtures - she wasn't the least bit impressed and flew off, leaving him there in the reeds ... all alone.  It made me laugh. 

Grackles have an interesting mating system, called "harem defense polygamy".    The females gather together and build their nests in a place that is safe from predators.  Then, the males compete to see which ones gets to defend the nest cluster and mate with ALL the females in the colony.  Simple on the surface, but DNA fingerprinting shows that only about a quarter of the young in a colony are actually sired by the dominant male.  Apparently the ladies like to step out, leaving the colony to mate with other males.  Isn't nature interesting?

Okay, so yesterday's snake blip was not a big hit here on the bliposphere!  I kind of knew that would be the case when I posted it, but decided that I needed to post the shot that would remind me of the day rather than the shot that would be "popular."  That said, you can reasonably expect to see a lot of birds from me for the next 30 days.  I want to be sure I've featured all of the common FL birds while I am here.  Which is part of the reason why I chose the lovely grackles for today's blip.  

Hubs delayed his return by a day, so will be home tomorrow night.  As always, I am looking forward to having him home again.  

The countdown to the big move is underway...32 days and counting...

TTFN,
Debbi