346 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



course, then swerved away. Its speed appeared to be somewhere 

 between 55-60 miles per hour." 



Hummingbirds have been seen so frequently hovering before the 

 brilliant red flowers in our gardens — trumpet vines clambering over 

 the porch, salvias gleaming scarlet in the flower beds — that it has been 

 assumed the birds have a preference for the color red. However, the 

 extensive investigations of Andrew L. Pickens (1930) bring out the 

 fact that it is the brightness of color — its conspicuousness against the 

 background — that draws the hummingbird to a flower. He says: 



It is easy to perceive that Hummingbirds prefer tlie intensity of color shades 

 rather than the paleness of color hues * * * 



[But] the question is one that cannot be decided by mere rule of spectrum or 

 pigments. There is so to speak a relativity of colors. * ♦ * 



Red being the complement of green is the most conspicuous color that a flower 

 can show. * * * 



Orange, while not so brilliant, is more showy in deeply shaded swamps and 

 woods than is red * • *. 



Green flowers are too inconspicuous among foliage. In certain contrasting 

 desert backgrounds, or on the sere dry-season prairies it should have value. 

 Thus, while no green Hummingbird flowers are known in the East, Nicotiana 

 paniculata one of the greenest large flowers I know, is much frequented in the 

 west during the dry season at least * * *. 



Complete lists [of flowers] would probably show red, the sharpest contrast 

 to green, a favorite everywhere, with orange in some favor in tree-shaded 

 regions and a neglected color like green rising in sun-browned territory. 



Experiments made by Miss Althea R. Sherman (1913) to test the 

 "supposedly erroneous theory which had been published to the effect 

 that Hummingbirds show a preference for red flowers" indicated con- 

 clusively that hummingbirds visited the bottles she placed about her 

 garden if they contained syrup, whether or not they simulated a 

 flower in shape or color. The birds associated even an untrimmed 

 bottle with food, just as they soon came to recognize Miss Sherman 

 herself as a supplier of food. 



Speaking of pollination Saunders (1936) says that the bee balm 

 "is the most important Humming Bird flower in Allegany Park. 

 The anthers and stigma brush the crown of the Humming Bird's head 

 as the bird probes the flower. The pollen is bright yellow, so that 

 most summer Humming Birds appear to have yellow crowns." 



Pickens (1927) points out in detail an interesting adaptation, in- 

 suring cross fertilization by the hummingbird, in the flower of Ma- 

 cranthera lecontei. He says: "Of all the forms that I have studied 

 this is the most exclusively Hummingbird flower, and I recall seeing 

 no other honey-gatherers in its vicinity." 



Voice. — The notes that come from the hummingbird's tiny throat 

 are high pitched and have a petulant quality, reflecting the bird's ir- 

 ritable nature. Sometimes the notes are angry-sounding, mouselike 



