Subject: [Tweeters] Anna's Hummingbirds
Date: Jan 12 11:04:53 2014
From: David Hutchinson - flora.fauna at live.com





Almost anything is possible with ANHU; certainly in the core of their resident range, the Los Angeles Basin, they would have young flying by now. It would be wise to have a visual check of what the contributor identifies as young hummingbirds - perhaps they are females, or birds with as yet an incomplete moult. But there are local records of breeding activity in late January and the weather is basically mild. We are having a lot of days above the critical plant growth temperature of 43 degrees Fahrenheit.

Subjectively I usually associate Anna's having eggs with the first native blooms in the forest e.g. Indian Plum, Red-flowering Currant and later on Salmonberry and I have obserbed none. But could we all work together to exclude the term "pair" from the discussion of this polygynous species? They do pair, but only in the fertilisation sense.