>
>>male hummers defend
>>a resource such as a patch of flowers and attract females to them in that
>>way (resource defence polygyny). In some cases the male will not give the
>>female access to the flowers unless she mates with him (prostitution
>>polygyny). The high level of polygamy and general promiscuity of
>>hummingbirds likely accounts for the large number of reported hybrids in the
>>group, similar to the duck situation.
>
>So I guess for all those females out on the Point, they head for the hills.
> You make it sound like a particular patch of flowers being defended by the
>male is ...umm, well... almost like a 'brothel' but run by the males, and the
>females are the 'customers', though likely not in the same sense as doing so
>for express purpose of simple sexual gratification. ...Hearst Castle ...hmm,
>they *have* to be there <g>. I'll go look. I don't know if what you say is
>applicable to Anna's and Allen's, per se, but to some of the other
>hummingbird species' in other places.
>

I don't know what Allen's, Rufous or Anna's do specifically, but I would
guess that females are attracted to the males based on their displays rather
than due to his patch of flowers. Males here probably do not obtain matings
by allowing females access to a defended patch of flowers, but I could be
wrong. In any case, the brothel analogy works the same way in hummers as in
humans, male's are the customers not females. Males get the benefit of
mating by exchanging a resource (flowers), the male's pay for the mating,
not the females. In hummers that practise this type of mating system, the
females are forced into mating in order to obtain a valuable resource.
Fortunately, female birds have a surprising number of ways of controlling
who fertilizes her eggs. These mechanisms are only recently being understood.

Alvaro Jaramillo "You are better off not knowing
Half Moon Bay, CA how sausages and laws are made"
alvaro at quake.net Otto von Bismarck,
but I saw it in a fortune cookie!

http://www.quake.net/~alvaro/index.html