EXPERIMENTS IN FEEDING HUMMING BIRDS DURING 

 SEVEN SUMMERS.^ 



By Althea R. Sherman, 

 Nationnl, loica. 



The experiments herein described were begun without intending 

 them to bear upon the question of the food naturally sought by the 

 ruby-throated humming bird {Archilochus coluhris) ; the original 

 aim of the feeding was to attract the humming birds about the yard 

 in the hope that some time they would remain to nest there. The 

 experiments have been conducted on independent lines without 

 knowledge of any similar work that was being done by others until 

 the autumn of 1912, except in one instance, where special acknowl- 

 edgments are due Miss Caroline G. Soule, of Brookline, Mass., who 

 in Bird Lore for October, 1900, described her success in feeding 

 humming birds from a vial, which she had placed in the heart of an 

 artificial trumpet flower made from Whatman paper and painted 

 with water colors. This suggestion of using artificial flowers was 

 taken, but more durable ones were made from white oilcloth, their 

 edges were stiffened with one strand of wire taken from picture cord, 

 and they were carefully painted with oil colors, the first to represent 

 a nasturtium and the second a tiger lily. 



In August of 1907 upon the appearance of a humming bird about 

 our flowers the artificial nasturtium, tacked to a stick, was placed 

 near a clump of blooming phlox, and its bottle was filled with a 

 sirup made of granulated sugar dissolved in water. The next day a 

 female rubythroat was seen searching the depths of tiger lilies that 

 grew north of the house ; as she flew to the east of the house she was 

 instantly followed, and was seen drinking from the artificial flower 

 for the space of about a minute, after which she flew to a rosebush, 

 wiped her bill, and rested a brief time before flying away. This was 

 about noon. She returned at intervals of about a half hour for the 

 next three hours, then at 3.10 o'clock she came back to search quite 

 thoroughly the phlox blossoms, this being the first time she had paid 



^ Reprinted by permission from The Wilson Bulletin No. 85, Vol. 25, No. 4, December, 

 1913. Copyrighted, 1913, by Lynds Jones. Read at the Thirty-first Annual Congress of 

 the American Ornithologists' Union, New York City, Nov. 11, 1913. 



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