THE RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD. 335 
eather new-flowing sweets but to see what flies the sweets themselves have gath- 
ered. If the bird extracted honey to any great extent—it does some—it would 
be rifling the bait from its own traps. Again the bird is not footless, as some 
suppose, but it spends a good deal of time perching on exposed limbs, from 
which it may dart, Flycatcher fashion, after passing insects. 
1 am almost inclined to deny the report also that this tiny creature is song- 
less. For in addition to the squeaks of excitement or anger, which all have 
heard, have we not seen an impetuous gallant dashing through the air in great 
rainbow mazes, before his lady love, demurely seated; and have we not heard 
him giving cry to a perfect ecstacy of chippering and suckling notes of such 
exquisite fineness that the human ear could only catch the crests of sound? 
Song is a relative term, to be sure; but to accuse the Hummingbird of being 
voiceless, is a bit of injustice. Ask the lady. 
Hop-o’-my-Thumb has, | am sorry to say, a flashing temper to match his 
throat. Rivals charge at each other with an impetuosity which makes us 
fearful that they will be spitted on each other’s beaks. Other birds a hundred 
times the size must sometimes suffer from the little tyrant’s spleen, but to see 
a Hawk cross the sky by jerks and plunges in a vain effort to avoid this tiny 
persecutor is not a wholly unedifying sight. 
The Hummingbird is full of curiosity and not, perhaps, without some 
sense of humor. Else why should one of them down in Washington County 
have hovered for full twenty seconds in mock uncertainty within eighteen 
inches of the author’s nose? It was only honest sunburn, and | resent the 
bird’s insinuation. 
The fairy’s nest is commonly saddled to an obliquely descending branch of 
an orchard or forest tree. It is a tiny tuft of vegetable down bound together 
and lashed to its support by a wealth of spider webbing and covered externally 
with lichens. When finished it is nothing more than an elfin bump on a log, 
but the unwary visits of the mother discover a secret otherwise profound. She 
sits upon two eggs like homeopathic pills—so dainty, indeed, that she herself 
must needs dart off the nest every now and then and hover at some distance to 
admire them. Both parents are valiant in defense of the nest, but the practical 
support of the little family seems to fall chiefly upon the mother. The young 
are fed by regurgitation—“a frightful looking act,” as Bradford Torrey says. 
