THE HUMMING BIRDS. 283 



terials of which they are composed consisting chiefly of plant down, 

 interwoven and strengthened by spiders' webs, and often ornamented 

 by an external mosaic of small lichens, small soft feathers being more 

 rarely employed. Their method of attachment to their support varies 

 greatly according to the species. Ordinarily the nest is saddled upon 

 a horizontal or slanting twig, to which it is very firmly bound by the 

 spiders 7 webs of which it is largely composed. The Hermit Humming 

 Birds (genus Phaeihornis), however, fasten their elongated nests to one 

 side of the extremity of long pointed leaves, for protection, it is sup- 

 posed, against monkeys and other predaceous animals. Others, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Gould, are hammock-shaped, and are most ingeniously at- 

 tached to the face of cliffs or rocks by means of spiders 7 webs. Those 

 made by the u Hill-stars " (genus Oreotrochilus), of the snowy regions 

 of the Andes, are described by Mr. Gould as being u very large, and 

 composed of wool, llama hair, moss, and feathers; at the top of this 

 great mass, of nearly the size of a man's head, is a little cup-shaped 

 depression in which the eggs are deposited." A nest of the Pichincha 

 Hill-star (0. pichincha) was found by Professor Jameson at a farm-house 

 on the snowy mountain of Antisaua, in Ecuador, at an altitude of 13,500 

 feet. It was attached to a straw rope suspended from the roof, in one 

 of the lower apartments to the house, the entrance to which was un- 

 provided with a door. (See pi. vi, fig. 2.) In the series of illustra- 

 tions comprising plates n-xiv we have selected examples of the ex- 

 treme variations of form and other characters in Humming Bird 

 nest architecture, and to these the reader is referred for further informa- 

 tion. 



The high degree of intelligence displayed by Humming Birds in con- 

 cealing their nests by making them of such form or material as will 

 serve to imitate natural excrescences of 'a branch, such as a knot or a 

 pine cone, andjn repairing accidents, has been referred to on the preced- 

 ing page. Sometimes the location of a nest pleases the owners so well 

 that they are unwilling to abandon the site, a new nest being added to 

 the one of the preceding year for several consecutive seasons. A beau- 

 tiful example of this is shown on plate I. The specimen from which 

 the illustration is taken is a nest of the Calliope Humming Bird (Stellula 

 calliope) in the National Museum collection, collected by Mr. Charles 

 H. Townsend on the St. Cloud Kiver, northern California, June 9, 1883, 

 and shows distinctly four nests thus united. The writer once found a 

 double nest of the Broad-tailed Humming Bird (Selasphorus platycercus), 

 the older one having, by the loosening and cracking of the bark to which 

 it was fastened, fallen around on the under side of the twig, the new 

 one being built immediately above it (see page 282). A double nest of 

 the Ruby- throat (Trochilus colubris) is described by Mr. Edwin H. 

 Eames in " The Hub " for July, 1890 (pp. 286, 287), as follows : 



On June 5, 1888, I secured a nest, containing one young bird and an egg on the 

 point of hatching, of the Ruby-throated Humming Bird. The nest is a very peculiar 

 one, being constructed upon one of the preceding year, and in a very conspicuous sit- 



