EUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD 347 



squeals; sometimes they are run into a nervous, fretful chattering, 

 always very sharp and clear, though by no means loud, and delivered 

 in a jerky, excited manner. 



A lone hummingbird is usually silent, except for the buzzing of its 

 wings, but when several birds are together they often become very 

 voluble and quarrelsome and jerk out their notes, now arranged in 

 emphatic phrases, squealing and chattering back and forth as if 

 they were carrying on an animated controversy in a jabbering lan- 

 guage. 



Sometimes a single bird approaches another one poised before a 

 flower and disputes its right to the place. Both then express their 

 mutual hostility by beginning to jabber, and after a dart at each 

 other and a fight, or at least a whirling about in the air, the winner 

 of the encounter returns quietly to the flower. Thus when we stand 

 close to a company of hummingbirds we hear the sound of their 

 voices rising and falling in irregular waves — anger or resentment 

 mounting up again and again and, in between, a short truce, marked 

 by the peace of humming wings. 



The pitch of the notes is invariably high, but it varies a good deal. 

 Sometimes a note rises almost to a piercing whistle, and often the 

 tone suggests the steely voice of the chimney swift. 



In the phrases the notes are arranged in many ways; usually both 

 squeals and short chips are combined, but either may be given alone, 

 and the pitch of either one may run upward or downward. The short 

 notes, when uttered alone are generally in series, repeated without 

 change over and over, coming in twos, threes, or more again and 

 again, the last note of each series commonly accented sharply. When 

 the squeals and chattering are interspersed they often fall into a very 

 pleasing rhytlmi. For example, a form often given when one bird 

 joins another is a single sharp note followed by a long, descending 

 chatter. 



The chief characteristics of the hummingbird's voice are the sharply 

 cut, emphatic enunciation and the attenuated quality. 



Mary Pierson Allen (1908), speaking of a fledgling hummingbird 

 that she fed with sweetened water, says: "He had his mother's zip- 

 zip^ which meant flowers or happiness, and a plaintive baby peet^ 

 peet, when he wanted food." 



Field marks. — Audubon (1842) states: "If comparison might en- 

 able you, kind reader, to form some tolerably accurate idea of their 

 peculiar mode of flight, and their appearance when on wing, I would 

 say, that were both objects of the same colour, a large sphinx or 

 moth, when moving from one flower to another, and in a direct line, 

 comes nearer the Humming-bird in aspect than any other object 

 with which I am acquainted." 



