194 KNOWING BIRDS THROUGH STORIES 



have the ruby throat. The young males have the throat 

 whitish finely streaked with dusky, taking on the brighter 

 color much later. The humming bird feeds largely on 

 small insects that gather in tubular flowers. He has a 

 partly tubular tongue which enables him to extract these 

 insects readily and also any nectar which may be in a tube 

 of the flower. 



But these birds do not depend on flowers alone for their 

 food. I have seen them "stand'' for two or three minutes 

 at a time in front of a branch on a box elder tree and 

 lick the aphids off of the leaves with their long sticky 

 tongues. I am sure most of you have seen gnats, mosquitoes, 

 or other small insects flying in swarms of a summer after- 

 noon The humming bird delights to find such a swarm. 

 He darts back and forth through it catching insects imtil, 

 tired out, he has to perch and rest, only to return to the 

 vchase in a few moments if the insects are still in sight. 



Mother Humming Bird usually raises two broods in a 

 summer. Mr. Humming Bird seldom alights, but when 

 he does the first thing he begins to do is to primp. He will 

 take a few steps sidewise, crane his neck, ruffle his feathers, 

 lift first one wing and then the other and finally begin to 

 run each quill feather in his wings separately through his 

 bill. It takes quite a while to attend to this, but he goes 

 through the performance perhaps a dozen or fifteen times 

 a day. 



If two strange humming birds happen to meet, there is 

 almost sure to be a hard battle. The first humming birds 

 I ever caught were two which were fighting so fiercely that 

 they fell to the ground and failed to notice me until I had 

 my hat over them. It is said that animals which have 



