Celebrating the Feminist Transgendered Hummingbird

A female NY Times science reporter reports that male hummingbirds are not doing their fair share of the bird housework:

An adult female white-necked Jacobin hummingbird ...

When she lays an egg, the male hummingbird who played an equal role in the conception of said egg is nowhere to be seen. It is only thanks to her hours of weaving that the egg has a nest at all. When her chick hatches, she alone will feed it regurgitated food from her long bill.

And then there is the constant harassment. As the muted-green females visit flowers to sip on nectar, they are chased, pecked at and body-slammed by aggressive males of their species, whose heads are a flamboyant blue.

Some females might describe this as romantic behavior by the male birds.

Not in the NY Times.

The article goes on to say that the females have a "trick". They can impersonate males, and then the male hummingbirds lose interest in them!

There is a lesson there for today's women. Just dress and act like a man, if you want to avoid male attention.