BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



sharp whirr of wings directly behind me, and a 

 moment later a ruby-throated hummingbird alight- 

 ed on the end of a long net handle which stuck 

 up over the stern-post. I rested on my oars and 

 watched for a full minute while the perfect plum- 

 aged mite preened and arranged some feathers 

 too small for my coarse eyesight. This was not 

 any of the Haitian hummers, some of which were 

 larger and one much smaller, but my own familiar 

 countryman of northern honeysuckles. When he 

 had finished his toilet, he wiped his beak, rose 

 gently, hung in front of my face for a moment, and 

 then, with a single upward curve, set a course 

 northward, directly across the wide expanse of 

 water. 



Early this year — as in the past for who can say 

 how many hundreds of centuries — a strange rest- 

 lessness will seize upon a host of these ruby- 

 throated hummingbirds scattered over mountains 

 and jungle from Panama and Costa Rica north- 

 ward throughout Mexico and in the Bahamas, 

 Cuba and here in Haiti. Feeding from the same 

 blossoms are larger and smaller hummingbirds, 

 some with sickle bills, others with long, waving 

 tail plumes. To these, February brings no special 

 message. But thousands upon thousands of ruby- 

 throats become gradually magnetized with the 

 northward pulling of ancestral habit. No change 

 in temperature or food impels them — the impulse 

 comes from within. Day by day they drift along, 

 borne on this impalpable wind of racial memory, 



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