422 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



lumbia, "a birch and maple draw is the favorite home of Stellula 

 calliope, and one can often see six or eight, buzzing around a birch 

 tree, which a Ked-naped Sapsucker has girdled." Winton Weyde- 

 meyer (1927), writing of its haunts in northwestern Montana, where 

 it is a common breeder, says : 



In Lincoln County the Calliope Hummingbird (Stellnla calliope) nests along 

 streams throughout most of the Canadian zone and downward into the upper 

 borders of the Transition zone. During the nesting season and late summer it 

 also frequents open mountains, ranging into the Hudsonian zone, and during 

 May and August is commonly seen in the breeding areas of lower Transition 

 zone species. Tree associations evidently have greater influence on its range 

 than does elevation. In the eastern part of the country I have found the species 

 to be common during the nesting season at 7,000 feet, although I have never 

 chanced actually to see a nest above 4,800 feet. In the Kootenai Valley, near 

 Libby, I have found it nesting abundantly at an elevation of less than 2,100 feet, 

 and I have no doubt that it breeds below 1,900 feet a few miles distant, in the 

 lower end of the valley, the only place in Montana where so low an elevation 

 occurs. 



Courtship. — The courtship performances of the hummingbirds all 

 follow the same general pattern, with only slight variations, and this 

 species is no exception to the rule. Grinnell, Dixon, and Linsdale 

 (1930) describe it very well as follows: 



An exhibition of courting flight that seemed fairly typical for this species was 

 observed on May 16, 1924. A female was down in a blossoming currant (Ribes 

 cereum) bush. A male started towering from her vicinity, slowly at flrst and with 

 an audible buzz, then faster until he reached a height of fully twenty-two meters. 

 Then he shot down in a broadly U-shaped course, passing the bush closely 

 (barely missing it) and ascended to an equal height on the opposite tip of the 

 "U." At the moment of passing the bush, within which the female was perched, 

 he gave out a droll, flatted sound hzt — short, not loud, like a bee held down. 

 After making three complete sky-dives, the male, on coming down the last time, 

 l>erched six meters away at the tip of a stem of budding service-berry bush. 

 The female began at once to feed at the currant flowers within the abundantly 

 white-flowering bush. 



The following variation in the antics was observed by L. E. Wyman 

 (1920) : 



On one occasion an angry buzzing, almost terrifying in volume, resolved 

 itself into a pair of these birds holding to each other's beaks and revolving like 

 a horizontal pinwheel, less than four feet from my eyes. Around they went, a 

 half-dozen times, then parted, the female perching and preening on a twig of 

 the oak-scrub just beyond arm's reach, with the male two feet farther away 

 and giving vent at three-second intervals to an explosive metallic tffinff. This 

 was, of course, made with the wings, but the bird was sufficiently screened so 

 that I could not see it clearly. 



On another occasion a female sat preening on a horizontal dead weed, when 

 a male shot up the hill-side close to the ground, passed the female, mounted 

 about twenty-five feet and darted down again in a long, narrow, vertical ellipse 

 that flattened where it touched the hill-side. As he passed the female she 



