148 THE SECOND BOOK OF BIRDS 
like it. Anyway, he grows very fast, and — 
as I said—ain three weeks he is beautifully 
feathered, with a bill as long as his mother’s, 
and ready to fly. 
A lady who had two young hummingbirds 
told me that they slept so soundly they were like 
dead birds. One could take them up and carry 
them about, and they would not wake. In cold 
weather she often wrapped one up in a piece of 
flannel and laid him in a soft, warm place, and 
he never stirred till morning. 
The way she got this pair of birds was inter- 
esting. She was walking in the woods and broke 
a dead branch from a tree, to use for something. 
On turning it over she saw a nest, and strange 
to say two little birds in it. She had been hold- 
ing it upside down, but they had held on so 
tightly that they did not fall out. 
The lady did not know what to do. She did 
not want baby hummingbirds, but she could n’t 
put the branch back, and she was afraid their 
mother would not find them if she left them. So 
she took them home. She had no trouble to 
feed them, and they lived with her six weeks, 
and died by accident at last. 
It is thought that the male ruby-throat does 
not come to the nest at all, but he must have 
some way of knowing how things are going on. 
