AN ISLAND EXISTENCE 



97 



their assurance was shown one day when a hummer fluttered 

 on vibrating wings no more than a foot from my nose, ex- 

 amined me carefully and then settled gently as a feather on the 

 protruding lens of my graflex. I remained as still as possible 

 and fully two minutes crept by before the tiny mite bestirred 

 itself and then calmly, without paying me the slightest atten- 

 tion, opened its wings and melted into the green vegetation. 



They were all of one type, a species found nowhere else in 

 the world but on this one island. Their nearest generic relatives 

 live today in the distant mountains of western Panama and in 

 Costa Rica. How the Inaguan species arrived on the island 

 is something of a mystery. One theory suggests that it is a 

 remnant of a once abundant group distributed throughout 

 the West Indies and which as the centuries slipped away be- 

 came less and less numerous as its numbers were eliminated 

 from island to island, gradually becoming extinct by accident, 

 disease, capture by enemies, lack of food or whatever ill fate 

 is peculiar to hummingbirds, leaving only the Inaguan species 

 and one other type as testimony of their existence. The other 

 theory, and the more dramatic one, is that the ancestors of the 

 Inaguan hummingbirds were caught up in some great tropical 

 storm of many centuries ago and flung the hundreds of miles 

 across the seething waters of the Caribbean Sea to a safe haven 

 on the level rocks of Inagua. The first theory is scientifically 

 more plausible but I prefer to picture in my mind the scene 

 that might have occurred if the second were correct. 



There would have been a succession of calm, clear days, bril- 

 liant and clear in the tropical sunshine along the coast of Costa 

 Rica, the usual prelude to hurricane weather. Undisturbed, the 

 ancestors of my Inaguan species would have passed lightly 

 from blossom to blossom as they had been accustomed to do 

 from time immemorial. Doubtless not a breath of air was stir- 

 ring to relieve the hot sun and in the unusual calm the hummers 



