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Message: <blockquote data-quote="deborah4" data-source="post: 1407518" data-attributes="member: 29880">Are you sure they are actually 'claiming territories' Howard?  That would indicate intent to breed on location I would have thought.   Corn Bunting are often male to multiple female polygynous and only have parental involvement in so far as establishing and defending a territory, so attracting as many females as possible is part of the polygynous mating strategy but as a pre-cursor to that, 'competition' between males by establishing superior song quality could just be an indication of migration/breeding synchronicity and part of a polygynous strategy ie. Song develops in response to reproductive readiness and in polygynous species, perhaps this vocal competition starts prior and during migration.  Not sure if the males arrive on their breeding territory before females, but if so, that could also explain the pre-migration behavior - ie. on arrival, the focus is on defending a territory for a number of females rather than on specific broods.  In this respect, your observations would make sense as it would be advantageous to have a number of returning females to any one breeding territory.Incidently, I'd be interested to know how you are identifying females vis a vis males without hand biometrics and distinguishing these from what might be just a mixed pre-migration flock? in other words, is there evidence the singing is actually resulting in selection of specific females as sexual partners?Don't know any papers/studies off hand - so just some casual observations on my part!</blockquote>

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