392 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



with pale brownisli buff or cinnamon, and lateral rectrices with mucli 

 less of cinnamomeous on basal portion." The yonng female, he says, 

 is "similar to the yonng male but rectrices as in adult female." 



Young males begin to acquire some red in the throat before the 

 end of July and assume the fully adult plumage late in the follow- 

 ing winter, or early in the spring, at the complete annual molt. 



Food. — Mrs. Bailey (1928) gives, as the food of the broad-tailed 

 hummingbird in New Mexico, "insects found in flowers, as pentste- 

 mon, larkspur, agave, gilia, gooseberry, and on willow catkins." Else- 

 where (1904), she says that "the throat of one shot was full of honey 

 and long-tailed, wasp-like insects." Bendire (1895) mentions the 

 flowers of Scrophular'm and Ocotilla as favorite feeding places. Mr. 

 Eockwell says in his notes: "August 3, 1902, at some willows on a 

 ranch near Crested Butte, I saw four hummingbirds. They seemed 

 to be interested with something in the willows, and I found many 

 perforations in the bark made by sapsuckers; vi\2iny ants and other 

 insects were about these perforations ; whether it was the sap or the 

 insects that attracted the birds I could not tell," 



Dr. Linsdale (1938) writes: "On June 18, 1930, at 7,000 feet on 

 Kingston Creek, a female broad-tailed hummingbird was watched 

 which apparently was feeding upon flying insects caught in the air. 

 It was in a small clearing near the creek. After a poise the bird 

 would dart 3 feet after an insect, then poise and go after another. 

 This was repeated half a dozen times, the bird being about 10 feet 

 above the ground." 



Apparently this, like other hummingbirds, lives to a large extent 

 on small spiders and minute insects of the orders Diptera, Hymenop- 

 tera, Hemiptera, Coleoptera, etc., which it finds in the flowers; nec- 

 tar, honej^, or sap may not be what at first attracted the birds, but 

 they have proved to be very acceptable foods, just as the eastern 

 rubythroat has learned to feed freely from glass containers filled 

 with syrup. Sugar is a very nourishing and strengthening food. 



Behavior. — Robert Ridgway (1877) writes thus attractively of the 

 behavior of the broad-tailed hummingbird: 



The flight of this Hiimming-bii'd is unusually rapid, and that of the male is 

 accompanied by a curious screeching buzz, while it is followed through an 

 undulating course. Long before the author of this curious sound was detected 

 its source was a mystery to us. This shrill screeching note is beard only when 

 the bird is passing rapidly through the air, for when hovering among the 

 flowers its flight is accompanied by only the usual muffled hum common to all 

 the species of the family. During the nesting-season the male is of an exceed- 

 ingly quarrelsome disposition, and intrepid, probably beyond any other bird, 

 the Flycatchers not excepted. All birds that apprt^ach the vicinity of his nest, 

 whether they be his own species or of the size of hawks, are immediately 

 assaulted with great force and pertinacity by this seemingly insignificant little 

 creature, the vigor of whose attacks, accompanied as they are by the shrill 



