The Broad-Tailed Humming-Bird 



(Selasphorus Platycercus) 

 By Gerard Alan Abbott 



If we desire to study the Broad-tailed Humming-bird in the regions that it 

 frequents we must journey to the mountainous district of western North Amer- 

 ica. Here it may be found in large numbers, for it is the most common of all the 

 species that frequent the mountains. It seeks its food of insects and honey from 

 the flowers of a prolific flora extending from Wyoming and Idaho southward 

 through Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and over the table lands of 

 Mexico into Guatemala. It is pretty generally distributed throughout the various 

 mountain systems between the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains and the 

 Sierra Nevadas. 



The broad-tails are very abundant in the balsam and pine belts of the San 

 Francisco Mountains of Arizona, where their principal food plants are the scarlet 

 trumpet flower and the large blue larkspur. 



It seems strange and unnatural that so delicate a bird and one so highly 

 colored should frequent localities where periods of low temperatures are com- 

 mon. Yet the broad-tailed humming-bird prefers high elevations and has been 

 known to nest at an altitude of eleven thousand feet, and it seldom breeds at 

 places lower than five thousand feet. 



The males leave for their winter home very early in the season. Usually this 

 migration takes place very soon after the young birds leave their nests. Mr. 

 Henshaw attributes this movement of the males to the fact that their favorite food 

 plant, the Scrophularia, begins to lose its blossoms at this time. He says : "It 

 seems evident that the moment its progeny is on the wing and its home ties severed, 

 warned of the approach of fall alike by the frosty nights and the decreasing supply 

 of food, off go the males to their inviting winter haunts, to be followed, not long 

 after, by the females and young. The latter, probably because they have less 

 strength, linger last." 



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