344 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



swift, who avoided the attack by a spurt that carried him well in 

 advance. The hummingbird soon overtook his enemy and made a 

 second swoop down toward him. By this time the birds were so far 

 away that I lost sight of them." 



Toward man, however, hummingbirds are usually complaisant, al- 

 most to the point of tameness. There are many instances recorded of 

 their being attracted, sometimes in large numbers, to gardens where 

 tubes of sugar and water are put out for their entertainment. 



One of the most successful of these feeding stations is the garden 

 of the late Mrs. Laurence J. Webster in Holderness, N. H. Here, for 

 many years, Mrs. Webster studied the birds and provided them with 

 such a bountiful supply of food that, apparently, all the humming- 

 birds in the vicinity resorted to her garden throughout the summer. 

 She told me that she came to recognize some of the individual birds 

 and, in a few instances, noticed that certain birds would take a long 

 flight, always in the same direction, when they left her garden, and 

 would not return for a long time — evidently visitors from a consid- 

 erable distance — whereas other birds were in and out of the garden 

 all day. She accustomed the birds to associate the sound of her voice 

 with the presence of food and often called them to a vial she held in 

 her hand by whistling the "phoebe" note of the cliickadee. 



Her garden on August 5, 1937, when Mr. Bent and I visited her, 

 was whirring with hummingbirds — at least 40, we thought. Mrs. 

 Webster covered the scattered feeding tubes and, seated at an open 

 window beside Mr. Bent, who held a filled tube in his hand, gave the 

 chickadee call. A bird came up out of the garden, poised a moment, 

 then alighted on Mr. Bent's finger. 



All day a deep hum sounds through her garden, rising or falling 

 in intensity as birds come together or feed from the vials undisturbed, 

 alone. At dusk, as one by one the birds leave the garden, the pitch 

 of the whirring wings lowers, gradually dying down to a dull, tranquil 

 sound, until "at twilight's hush" the last bird has gone. 



It was in this garden that the motion pictures, described below, 

 were taken. 



The remarkable flight of the hummingbird, during which the wings 

 move so rapidly that they are practically invisible, has attracted a 

 great deal of interest and conjecture. Some observers maintained that 

 the birds sometimes fly backward when leaving a flower — Bradford 

 Torrey, for example, seemed to have had no doubt on the subject (see 

 above) ; other observers, however, objected on mechanical grounds 

 that no bird can fly backward. It remained for motion photogi-aphy 

 to settle the question. 



That the hummingbird does fly backward has been definitely proved, 

 and the manner in which backward flight is accomplished has been 



