590 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



intense humming. She alighted on the tree near the drills, and 

 the male then hurled himself through the air with amazing speed, 

 describing a curve such as would be drawn by a violently swung 

 pendulum attached to a cord fifteen or eighteen feet long. The 

 female was at the lowest point of the arc described by her vehe- 

 ment admirer, and she sat perfectly motionless while he swung 

 past her eight times. When he moved fastest that is, when he 

 approached and passed her he produced in some unknown way 

 a high, clear, sweet musical note, louder even than the humming 

 which was incessant during his flight. In this first performance 

 the male moved from north to south. A few minutes later he 

 went through the dance a second time, describing a shorter curve 

 and moving east and west. Still a third time, when the female 

 had taken position in the midst of a few dense branches, the male 

 faced her, and in a short arc, the plane of which was horizontal, 

 flew back and forth before her. I had seen this performance once 

 before, in July, 1890, at another orchard, and at that time I fancied 

 that both birds took part in the flight, but in this case the birds 

 were close above me as I lay among the ferns, and there was no 

 difiiculty in seeing clearly all that they did. During July, 1893, 

 whenever I visited this orchard, which I call " No. 4," I found a 

 male and a female rubythroat in attendance upon it. 



In July and August, 1890, while watching sapsuckers at what 



1 called orchards " No. 1 " and " No. 2," I found that some wood- 

 peckers adopted an entirely different method of dealing with 

 humming birds from that practiced by others. At orchard No. 1 

 the woodpeckers drove away a humming bird with a marked dis- 

 play of anger whenever one showed itself near the large red maple 

 which was being tapped. At orchard No. 2, on the contrary, the 

 sapsuckers allowed the rubythroats to drink at drills a few inches 

 from their own bills, and resented only marked impertinence on 

 the part of their tiny visitors. At No. 1 scores of visits were 

 paid by humming birds every day, but they reached the drills in 

 a comparatively small number of instances. When they did gain 

 them they drank long and deeply, often perching upon the bark 

 and drinking while their nervous wings were motionless. At No. 



2 it seemed impossible to estimate the number of humming birds 

 in attendance. I went so far as to shoot a male and a female 

 in order to feel certain that more than one pair of the tiny birds 

 came to the drills. Nine minutes after my second crime a third 

 humming bird was quietly drinking at the wells. Orchards No. 1 

 and No. 2 were deserted in or after 1891, their trees for the most 

 part being dead, or so nearly dead as to be unattractive to the sap- 

 suckers. A few rods from No. 2 a new orchard was observed by 

 me in 1892. It may be a direct continuation of No. 2, but as all 

 the woodpeckers at No. 2 were supposed to have been shot in 1890, 



