There's a convention of posting previous discussions so people can see previous discussion. If there's no discussion and you think the links themselves are interesting, you can just post the links.
...and advertised them as "Discussions on similar submissions", where no discussion took place. Just post the links, as parent recommended, rather than making readers go through the intermediate step of clicking an HN link. And then clearly label it as "other links about hummingbirds" rather than "Discussions...". :-)
I think your critics have a point. I looked at the text of the links, then at the number of comments, and skipped all of them, because I'm mainly here for a c82 page, but I am a sucker for HN discussions. It was misleading, unless meant as a presage to the eventual discussions your linking will generate?
It's pretty much the HN convention, you can find lots of moderator and other comments about it. Posting links to previous significant discussions makes sense, posting links to links a lot less so.
