Because most ornithophilous flowers in North America are red (Pickens, 1930, 1941, Pickens and Garrison 1931, Grant 1966, Grant and Grant 1968), a general belief has arisen that hummingbirds have coevolved an innate preference for red flowers. This view has been supported and challenged by field (Woods 1927, Wagner 1946, Stiles 1976) and experimental studies (Sherman 1913, Bené 1941, 1945, Lyerly et al. 1950, Collias and Collias 1968, Miller and Miller 1971, Ewald 1979, Wheeler 1980, Welker 1984). These and other workers have proposed that feeding hummingbirds may be influenced by weather, time of day, location of food source, chemical composition of nectar, concentration of nectar, proximity to perches, availability of alternate foods, and competition.