Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 19:25:00 -0700
From: Sheri Williamson <tzunun@mindspring.com>
To: HUMNET-L@listserv.lsu.edu
Subject: Re: [HUMNET-L] female gorget patterns

Hello, Humnetters,

Tom, banding data suggest that you're right on both counts.
In our banding
in AZ, Tom and I have documented consistency through time
in gorget patterns
of female Black-chinneds, and data on Rufous females,
painstakingly
collected and analyzed by bander Ellie Jones, showed a
tendency for the
number of iridescent feathers to increase over time. No
reason to doubt that
the same thing happens in Calliope and Broad-tailed, , but to
my knowledge no
one has undertaken a study of this phenomenon, maybe
because it's not widely
known in these species or because it happens in such a
small percentage of
the females compared to Rufous/Allen's. I'm not even sure
it's been studied
in Anna's, which seems like an obvious choice.

Sheri Williamson
Bisbee, AZ
tzunun@mindspring.com