Hi tweets,

I was out photographing wildflowers today when I witnessed a courting male
Rufous hummer, dive at a female, practically knock her to the ground,
apparently crashing the both of them into the fairly dense stems of the
willow bush. At this point there was a change in tune and the male seemed
to wheel to and fro within the tight cluster of willow stems. I was amazed
it was able to manoeuvre at all.

The change in tune I believe, coincided with copulation. The male made
sounds that I can only describe as somewhat like the humming rhythmic sounds
that a starving lawnmower with a superfast idle might make. I had heard
these sounds before and questioned whether or not they were related to
copulation. At this point I am convinced.

This would be the first time I have witnessed hummingbird copulation, albeit
somewhat indirectly since it was so hard to see what was happening exactly.
The whole affair took a surprising amount of time, relative to the usual
high-speed action of hummers. I estimate 10 seconds of 'humming' at ground
level. In this amount of time, the hummer would have had 200 heartbeats.
Ok maybe in this case it may have reached 400!
Cheers,

Don Cecile
Port Alberni, BC, CANADA V9Y 6Z5
eMAIL: dcecile at cln.etc.bc.ca