112 BIRDS OF THE ROCKIES 



One day, while staying at Buena Vista, Colorado, I 

 hired a saddle-horse and rode to Cottonwood Lake, twelve 

 miles away, among the rugged mountains. The valley 

 is wide enough here to admit of" a good deal of sun- 

 shine, and therefore flowers studded the ground in places. 

 It was here I saw the only female broad-tailed hummer 

 that was met with in my rambles in the Rockies. She 

 was flitting among the flowers, and did not make the 

 buzzing sound that the males produce wherever found. 

 She was not clad so elegantly as were her masculine 

 relatives, for the throat-patch was white instead of 

 purple, and the green on her back did not gleam 

 so brightly. But, oddly enough, her sides and under 

 tail-coverts were stained with a rufous tint — a color 

 that does not appear at all in the costume of the 

 male. 



A curious habit of these hummers is worth describ- 

 ing. The males remain in the breeding haunts until 

 the young are out of the nest and are beginning to be 

 able to shift for themselves. Then the papas begin to 

 disappear, and in about ten days all have gone, leaving 

 the mothers and the youngsters to tarry about the sum- 

 mer home until the latter are strong enough to make 

 the journey to some resort lower in the mountains or 

 farther south. The reason the males do this is perhaps 

 evident enough, for at a certain date the flowers upon 

 whose sweets the birds largely subsist begin to grow 



