\}gOT,. ClRIOSITV OF A HUMMINGBIRO. 55 



CURIOSITY OF A HUMMINGBIRD. 



Last summer, as I was sittiiii^in the woods behind a summer- 

 house, making the hissing sound which Mr. Chapman recom- 

 mends to attract birds, a hummingbird came to me and hovered 

 over and flew about my head, now and then alighting a few 

 moments, not upon me, but on some twig near by, surveying me 

 curiously the while. Then off it darted till lost to view. But 

 pretty soon, as I kept on making the sounds, always sitting quite 

 stiil, back it came again, acting as before. The bird came and 

 went away in this manner four times. It constantly uttered a 

 sound very similar to the noise I was making with my lips. All 

 this took place in a few minutes. 



There were two things new to me in the behaviour ot this 

 beautiful creature : its chirping and its intelligent curiosity. I 

 find the chirping mentioned in Mr. Saunders's interesting article on 

 Canadian Hummingbirds in The Naturalist of last July. The 

 curiosity, or rather the essentially bird-like curiosity, shov.n by 

 this hummingbird, was very surprising to me, as I had been led 

 to believe, by reading Mr. Hudson's account of the nature and 

 habits of hummingbirds, that none but the crudest insect-like 

 curiosity need be looked for in any hummingbird. That most 

 charming of natural history writers, in "The Naturalist in La 

 Plata," after noticing that hummingbirds have frequently been 

 stated to be more like insects than birds in disposition, affirms 

 that they are not to be compared even with the more intelligent 

 insects, but have a much closer resemblance to the solitary wood- 

 boring bees and to dragonflies. To support his opinion, he makes, 

 among others, the following statements some of which are of m- 

 terest in connection with Mr. Saunders's observations : "Their 

 aimless attacks on other species approaching or passing near 

 them, even on large birds like hawks and pigeons, is a habit they 

 have in common with many solitary wood-boring bees. They also, 

 like dragonllies and other insects, attack each other when they 

 come together while feeding ; and in lliis case their action 

 strangely resembles that of a couple of butterflies, as they revolve 

 about each other and rise vertically to a great height in the air. 

 Again, like insects, they are undisturbed at the presence of man 



