BIRDS WITH A HANDICAP 



vision. Their motions are too rapid for the eye clearly 

 to follow. Though they have no song, and emit only 

 an insect-like chirp or squeak, the hummer, as a writer 

 has prettily said, "needs none. Its beauty gives it dis- 

 tinction, and its wings make music." 



Nearly everyone knows the little hummer — the 

 Ruby-throated Hummingbird, the books call it — which 

 darts about in the garden from flower to flower. Its 

 tiny wings move so rapidly that they appear only as a 

 blur, and produce the humming sound from which the 

 bird takes its name. Almost fearless of man, it hovers 

 by the blossom close beside us, like some large insect. 

 Though it measures a trifle over three inches long, 

 there are insects which can easily be mistaken for it. 

 A certain large moth has often deceived me for the 

 moment; but the fact that it comes in the dusk, when 

 the little hummer has gone to bed, may guard one 

 against being deceived. 



The popular idea is that the hummer lives only on 

 honey gathered from flowers. This is a mistake. The 

 bird does secure some honey, but its food consists 

 mainly of the small insects which frequent the flowers. 

 Some of these insects are injurious to the blossom and 

 the tiny bird fulfills a useful function in destroying them. 

 That the hummer is insectivorous is also shown by its 

 habit of catching tiny insects on the wing, which is 

 occasionally observed. 



So familiar are Hummingbirds toward man that they 

 will readily enter open windows of houses if they see 



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