Dunnock the female. Males try to ensure their paternity by pecking at the cloaca of the female to stimulate ejection of rival males' sperm. Dunnocks take just one-tenth of a second to copulate and can mate more than 100 times a day. Males provide parental care in proportion to their mating success, so two males and a female can commonly be seen provisioning nestlings at one nest. Other mating systems also exist within dunnock populations, depending on the ratio of male to females and the overlap of territories. When only one female and one male territory overlap, monogamy is preferred. Sometimes,
Huma bird Huma bird The Huma (, pronounced "Homā", Avestan: "Homāio"), also Homa, is a mythical bird of Iranian legends and fables, and continuing as a common motif in Sufi and Diwan poetry. Although there are many legends of the creature, common to all is that the bird is said never to alight on the ground, and instead to live its entire life flying invisibly high above the earth. There are numerous folk interpretations of the name, among them that of the Sufi teacher Inayat Khan, who supposed that "in the word "Huma", "hu" represents spirit, and the word "mah" originates from