BIRDS OF KANSAS 89 



Iris dark brown; bill, legs, feet and claws black. 



These hardy little beauties begin to arrive from the 

 south as soon as the cherry and apple trees are in blossom ; 

 the males several days in advance; brave, pugnacious 

 little fellows, that, during the mating season, will fight 

 their rivals for their lady loves, till death ; and in defense 

 of their homes boldly attack the larger birds, and often 

 dart at and try to frighten man away. They breed from 

 the Gulf coast north to at least the fifty-seventh parallel. 

 The following beautiful description of their flights and 

 manner of feeding is taken from " Our Birds in their 

 Haunts," by Mr. Langille: 



" There are many birds the flight of Avhich is so rapid 

 that the strokes of their wings cannot be counted, but here 

 is a species with such nerve of wing that its wing strokes 

 cannot be seen. ^A hazy semicircle of indistinctness on 

 each side of the bird is all that is perceptible.' Poised in 

 the air, his body nearly perpendicular, he seems to hang 

 in front of the flowers which he probes so hurriedly, one 

 after the other, with his long, slender bill. That long, 

 tubular, fork-shaped tongue may be sucking up the nec- 

 tar from those rather small cylindrical blossoms, or it may 

 be capturing tiny insects housed away there. Much more 

 like a large sphynx moth, hovering and humming over the 

 flowers in the dusky twilight, than like a bird, appears tliis 

 delicate fairy-like beauty. How the bright green of the 

 body gleams and glistens in the sunlight ; while the ruby 

 colored throat, changing with the angle of light as the bird 

 moves, is like a bit of black velvet above the white under 

 parts, or it glows and shimmers like a flame. Each im- 

 perceptible stroke of those tiny wings conforms to the 



