Dear Doctor,
I’m flattered you want to introduce me to some East Texas birds! Consider me interested. Great-tailed grackles like myself have a mating system scientists call “non-faithful female frank polygyny,” which basically means … we get around. Male and female grackles both mate with multiple members of the opposite sex, so if you have some good-lookin’ grackles over there, maybe I’ll make a trip out. And I’d usually say I stick to great-tailed grackles, but given the recent news about the “grue-jay” – a never-been-seen hybrid of the blue jay and the green jay that was spotted earlier this year – I might be open to meeting some other species as well. While it’s extremely rare, there have been a handful of cases of grackles hybridizing with red-winged blackbirds and Brewer’s blackbirds, but scientists think that only happens when there aren’t many grackles around. Regardless, feel free to share my personal ad: “Very handsome, beautiful, iridescent male great-tailed grackle seeks partner/partners who enjoy screeching, squawking, running around on the ground and descending with thousands of our friends onto municipal infrastructure."
Yours,
Grackle
