254 General Notes. \_f$$ 



the nest and entirety unhidden; yet the bird paid no more attention to me 

 than she might had I been a part of the tree I very quietly leaned against. 



I once saw a female Hummingbird gather lichens from the body of a 

 beech tree. She held herself poised before it, darting upon it again and 

 again, until she had in her bill all she wished to carry. 



About nine o'clock one spring morning, when lilacs were in bloom, we 

 discovered that the old lilac bush by the well was 'swarming' with Hum- 

 mingbirds — just come; we knew they were not there a few minutes before. 

 There are live large lilacs on our premises ami those of a near neighbor. 

 On investigation 1 found four of these bushes alive, as it were, with 

 Hummers — all female6. The fifth bush, a Persian, they did not favor. 

 The Persian lilac, with its slender, lithe branches and great, drooping 

 clusters, is very beautiful when in bloom, but its flowers lack the sweetness 

 ot the common species. Then, all the time, there were birds in the air 

 constantly coining ami going from bush to bush. They remained the 

 greater part of the day. 1 spent much time standing within one of 

 those bushes. The birds seemed not in the least disturbed by my 

 presence. There were seldom less than ten and often fifteen of them 

 about the particular bush I was occupying. livery now and then one 

 would alight and sometimes would pass her long tongue back and forth 

 through her bill to tree it from pollen. In the afternoon a male Hum- 

 mingbird occasionally came to the- flowers but was invariably driven away 

 by the females. Towards evening the Hock, apparently undiminished in 

 numbers, disappeared as abruptly as it had appealed in the morning. On 

 the following day the Persian lilac was still in its native purple, but the 

 beauty was gone from the other four bushes; the (lowers were a dull 

 copperas color. 



Once again 1 fell in with a wave of migrating Hummingbirds. These 

 weie in the eighty-acre forest and this time all males. These were not in 

 a close Sock as before, but were very plentifully spiced throughout the 

 forest. 



In a neighbor's orchard a Hummingbird sucked juice from an apple 

 while a young girl was in the act of paring it. 



Once, on one of my rambles, I stopped to talk with a friend in her 

 garden. A stalk of double velvet marigolds, broken over the day before, 

 drooped upon the ground. 1 suppose decay had set in, yet, as the flowers 

 were still tolerably bright, 1 carried them with me when I resumed my 

 walk. While pausing at a cornfield a Hummingbird, leaving the corn 

 blossoms, came and leisurely fed from the marigolds in my hand, insert- 

 ing its bill between I he outer petals of t he (lowers. 



I (and others also, no doubt) have found it a very common thing for 

 Hummingbirds to be hovering and apparently feeding in the vicinity of 

 dead branches branches checking in the summer sun. Are they not 

 feeding upon something attracted by decaying limbs, — insects invisible 

 to our eyes? — Jank L. HlNE, Sedan, hid. 



