A pair of Czekl drakes readying at a flower duel.
The one stretching and yawning is dressed in full dueling/dancing attire, which shows off material wealth via fine clothing and feathers while also exposing the sexiest part of his breeding plumage (in this culture it's the head and neck) and his flushed blue skin.
The other is his pair bonded partner, whose drab full body covering and clipped quills establishes that he is not available for reproduction this year, and meets expected modesty standards for a seasonally celibate drake. His presence makes his reproductively available partner more attractive to prospective hens, as it indicates that the celibate drake will have no offspring of his own this year and his full investment will be in his partner's young (and thus that of any hens who choose him).
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[Key for the typical sex assignments across qilik sexual variation:
Hen: Lays eggs, has duller coloration year-round, largest average body mass.
Drake: Produces sperm, has brighter coloration that molts into very colorful breeding plumage, skin seasonally flushes blue, smaller average body mass.
Faeder: Produces sperm and is usually physically indistinguishable from hens in average size and coloration. Can be anywhere between 1-25% of the sperm producing population.]
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Qilik species-wide descend from an ancestral mating system in which hens did not form pair bonds with drakes and played no role in raising subadult offspring, and rather would mate with chosen drake(s) and leave their eggs with the most favored suitor. Drakes would form long term pair bonds with other (usually related) drakes and cooperatively brood and raise young together. Faeder would wander through lekking grounds and opportunistically mate with hens (without having to directly compete with drakes) and play no further role in hatching/rearing their offspring.
They have brief windows of seasonal fertility triggered by the springtime increase of daylight hours (with some equatorial populations having their cycles triggered by seasonal rains instead). Most drakes experience a significant surge of testosterone which causes their springtime molt producing very bright new feathers and their skin to flush blue (if they are well-nourished).
Modern qilik have full behavioral plasticity that subjects this baseline mating system to tremendous cultural variation. There are some broad commonalities- drakes perform the majority of child rearing across most cultures, forms of drake sexual display (whether directly involved in reproduction or not) are nearly ubiquitous in the form of various cultural practices (dances, songs, mock or real combat, etc), and seasonal fertility is a purely biological trait and a universal.
The nomadic culture and heavily dispersed population of the Czekl people means reproductive arrangements are rarely made in advance. Rather, regional populations assemble in established locations during mid spring for a month-long event where the usually separated hen/faeder clans and drake clans can mingle. This is a time for trade, for drake parents to find suitable clans for any of their young adult hen/faeder children, and for individuals looking to reproduce to find a suitable (and highly temporary) partner.
In this culture, hens usually play no direct part whatsoever in their children's lives and may very well never see them hatched. Hens are believed to be the mechanism that supplies spiritual ancestral guardianship to their young, but their material responsibility begins and ends with finding a drake who can show himself to be strong, handsome, healthy, tied to a good clan, and economically secure enough to take good care of their offspring. This process is sometimes accomplished with simple meeting and talking, but the flashiest ways for drakes to advertise themselves is the flower duel.
This is a combination of a dance and a fight, in which available drakes congregate on a dueling ground, match up against the best looking rival they can find, and attempt to pin them to the ground while also dancing to chanted music and showing off their finest clothing and sexy feathers. Hens will watch these proceedings (usually aided by other members of their clan), and can approach anyone that catches their eye after the fact to converse and ensure that they have found a good father for their children. This also functionally provides a mechanism for drakes who do not have a pair-bonded male partner to attract a co-parent, and this culture's equivalents of romance stories lavish attention to narratives of flower duel rivals becoming enamored in the process of their mock battle.
Czekl culture places very little expectation on even temporary fidelity, and hens will often mate with multiple drakes per season and only provide their single egg (often of indeterminate siring) to the one they deem best. It's up to an individual drake to not only prove that he's extremely sexy and excellent father material, but that he can be good company for the week or so between the first (of usually many) acts of breeding and his reproductive partner(s) laying their eggs. While hens and drakes rarely form any sort of permanent bond in this culture (and aren't likely to see each other whatsoever for the rest of the year), these temporary friendships can be meaningful and enjoyable. There's plenty of things to do at this gathering besides just showing off and fucking, and temporary mates that actually hit it off will often bring their respective clans together to socialize and trade.
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The modesty standards of qilik cultures trend towards regulating attire of drakes more intensely than hens/faeder, especially when in breeding plumage and skin condition. Czekl society has fairly limited modesty standards, with the cloaca being the only part of the body expected to remain publicly covered in most contexts regardless of gender. The only major exception is that drakes who are choosing to remain celibate for the breeding season (or who have secured as many partners as they can handle) are expected to demonstrate this with full body covering. The exposure of seasonally blue tinted skin and breeding plumage is treated as an advertisement of full sexual availability, and uncovered drakes who refuse any mating are often subject to aggression and treatment as sexually deviant.
Czekl drake pairs typically take turns playing the reproductive role, hence the routine presence of seasonally celibate males at this event. A drake being able to display that he not only has a bonded partner but one who will remain nonreproductive for this season increases his chances of reproductive hookups. It tends to be assumed that partnered drakes will disproportionately invest in their own offspring, so having sex with a drake who has a celibate male partner is seen by most hens as guaranteeing a better future for the one and only egg they can lay each year.
This perception is a cultural bias rather than a response to behavioral drives, as partnered drakes do not actually show instinctive preference for their own young over that of their pair-bonded partner's. The evolutionary background for this is rooted in pre-behaviorally modern qilik male partners very frequently being biological brothers, and thus reaping selective benefits in mutual care for their related young. This is not as ubiquitously the case for behaviorally modern qilik, though incest taboos are rarely applied to bonded drake relationships. In the Czekl sphere, up to a quarter of these nonreproductive pair bonds are between male siblings.
It is exceptionally rare for qilik cultures to form taboos surrounding homosexual behavior between drakes, and when extent they tend to regulate actual sex acts rather than the forming of these pair bonds in of themselves. Less rare is acceptance of drake celibacy (outside of various religious contexts that dictate it), referring to complete/attemptedly lifelong abstinence from mating with hens. Czekl (and most central plains qilik groups) do not police the sexuality of drakes as aggressively as more intensely hen-matriarchal cultures do, but it’s still an expectation that all drakes will participate in bringing offspring to their clans over the course of their lives. Those who remain Serially (rather than seasonally) celibate are often subject to discrimination and sometimes even ousting from their own clans. The clan is the central unit of Czekl society and drake clans (treated as bloodlines) are sustained by their members providing offspring, so choosing never to do so is treated as imperilment of a clan's future.
Czekl drakes forming permanent pair bonds with hens is considered unnatural and deviant (though not aggressively policed, and very rare in practice), and forming these with faeder is HIGHLY stigmatized (faeder themselves are treated as barren hens in spite of their actual fertility, and are discouraged both from mating with hens and from forming bonds with drakes/joining drake clans). The practice of seasonally celibate drakes appearing in this public setting with full body covering has (culturally unintentional) functions in enabling these stigmatized drake/faeder pair bonds to fly under the radar (by giving an avenue for a faeder to hide her dull coloration and therefore sex assignment, under the guise of being a celibate drake), and allowing them to obtain offspring for themselves.
