404 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



damage done. Mr. W. E. Parrott, of Sergief Island, had a large 

 strawberry patcli, the fruit of which he marketed in the nearby town 

 of Wrangell. Time and again, so he told us, he had seen a humming- 

 bird dash at one of the bright red berries, apparently under the 

 impression that it was a flower, and the bird's bill would be thrust 

 through the fruit, which, of course, was ruined. He had found a 

 number of berries pierced in this way, and was puzzled to account 

 for the damage until he saw a hummingbird in the act." 



Mr. DuBois saj^s, in his notes, that the bird he was watching 

 paid no attention to a red-clover blossom that he dipped in diluted 

 honey and hung on a branch near the nest. He saw one "feeding 

 in a novel manner over the small garden in the clearing. The bird 

 was about 30 feet in the air, now poised on vibrating wings, now 

 darting here and there like a dragonfly, apparently catching small 

 insects on the wing. One day (July 22) I saw her drinking at the 

 spring. She hovered above the pool, as she would above a flower, 

 dipping her bill into the water several times. On the 27th, I again 

 saw her getting water at the spring, but in a different manner. She 

 stood, for a second or two at a time, in the film of water that flowed 

 over a board, and dipped her bill into it several times." 



Behavior. — All observers seem to agree that jealous courage and 

 pugnacity are among the chief attributes of the rufous hummingbird ; 

 it seems to be the dominant species in the vicinity of its nest and 

 about its feeding places, driving away, not only other hummingbirds, 

 but other species of larger birds and animals ; it seems to love to fight 

 and often appears to provoke a quarrel unnecessarily. Mr. DuBois 

 has sent me the following note: "Once during the afternoon of July 

 17, while the hummingbird was incubating, an olive-backed thrush 

 inadvertently came too close to the nest. The little bird darted after 

 him so suddenly and violently that she made him squawk as he hur- 

 ried away. Another intruder was a chipmunk. He was searching 

 for huckleberries — running on the ground and climbing in the small 

 bushes — and at length his occupation brought him almost beneath 

 the hummer's nest. She darted after him; and the sudden onslaught 

 evidently filled him with terror. He beat a hasty retreat, squealing 

 lustily as he ran. It is not surprising that the sudden movements of 

 the hummingbird and the ominous sound of her wings, at close quar- 

 ters, are terrorizing to any trespasser. On another occasion she 

 chased a good sized bird away from the neighborhood." 



Mrs. Wheelock (1904) saw a male rufous hummer attack and drive 

 away a Brewer's blackbird that had chanced to alight in the bush 

 containing the hummer's nest. "This blackbird was nesting in a 

 hollow post which stood in four feet of water fifty feet from the 



