>
>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.

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The usual Rufous "courting" goes something like this:

Stage 1): Dive-bombing of female by male;
Stage 2): "Shuttle Dance" wherein the male maintains an almost stationary
position in front of the female, all the while rotating his hindquarters in a
wild figure-of-eight pattern; female seems to eventually become entranced by
the flaming hellion in front of her and goes into some sort of trance;
Stage 3): Male takes advantage of stupored female to copulate.

The wheeling to and fro may have been the Shuttle Dance.

- Jack
***************************
*Jack Bowling *
*Prince George, BC *
*jcbowling at mindlink.bc.ca *
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