88 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



flies in a sort of half flitting hover, and seizes it with a 

 sharp snap of the bill.^ Sometimes he descends from his 

 perch and captures a grasshopper that has just taken a 

 short flight, and occasionally seizes one that is crawling 

 up some tall stalk of grass. Those farmers who keep bees 

 dislike this bird, because of his bad habit of eating as 

 many of those insects as show themselves in the neighbor- 

 hood of his nest; but they should remember that the 

 general interests of agriculture are greater than those of a 

 hive of bees." 



Their nests are usually placed on branches of trees, in 

 open and exposed situations, six to twenty feet from the 

 ground; in treeless localities, in almost any available 

 place; a rather bulky, flat structure, composed of stems 

 of weeds and grasses, and lined with hair-like rootlets, 

 and often, woven in with the same, bits of rags and twine. 

 Eggs three to six, usually four, .90x.68. They vary greatly 

 in size, and measurements as high as l.OSx.TS have been 

 given. (Ridg-way says .96x.69.) A set of four eggs, 

 taken at ISTeosho Falls, only measure: .Y8x.64, .Y9x.65, 

 .80x.66, .82x.67; white to creamy white, thinly spotted 

 with purple to dark reddish brown; in form, ovate. 



XXIIL— EUBY-THROATED HUMMHsTGBIRD. 



Trochilus coluhris (Linn.). 



Summer resident ; common in the eastern portion of the 

 State. Arrive the last of April to flrst of May; begin 

 laying the last of May; the bulk leave in September; a 

 few remain into October. 



Habitat. Eastern l^orth America; west to the high 

 central plains ; north into the fur countries, and south in 

 winter to Cuba, and through eastern Mexico to Veragua. 



