164 THE LONG-TAILED HUMMING-BIRD. 



cross each other like the blades of scissors. The throat, breast, and whole of the lower 

 parts are glowing emerald green, except the under tail-coverts, which are purple-black. 

 The top of the head and nape of the neck are velvet black, and the feathers of the head are 

 rather long, and form a kind of loose plume. The whole length of a male bird is rather more 

 than ten inches, the long tail-feathers being between seven and eight inches in length. 



The female is not possessed of the beautiful tail which distinguishes her mate ; the under 

 parts are white, covered with green spots caused by the green tips of the feathers, the top of 

 the head is dirty brown, and her entire length is little more than four inches. Mr. Gosse, in 

 his well-known "Birds of Jamaica," has given some admirable descriptions of this pretty 

 bird and its habits. 



" It loves to frequent the margins of woods and roadsides, where it sucks the blossoms of 

 the trees, occasionally descending to the low shrubs. There is one locality where it is abun- 

 dant, the summit of that range of mountains just below Bluefields, and which is known as 



the Bluefields ridge Not a tree, from the thickness of one's wrist up to the giant 



magnitudes of the hoary figs and cotton trees, but is clothed with fantastic parasites ; begonias 

 with waxen flowers, and ferns with hirsute stems, climb up the trunks ; enormous bromelias 

 spring from the greater forks and fringe the horizontal limbs ; curious orchidse, with matted 

 roots and grotesque blossoms, droop from every bough, and long lianes, like the cordage of a 

 ship, depend from the loftiest branches or stretch from tree to tree. Elegant tree-ferns and 

 towering palms are numerous ; here and there the wild plantain, or heliconia, waves its long 

 ivy-like leaves from amidst the humbler bushes, and in the most obscure corners, over some 

 decaying body, rises the nobler spike of a magnificent limodarum. The smaller wood consists 

 largely of the plant called glass-eye berry, the blossoms of which, though presenting little 

 beauty in form or hue, are pre-eminently attractive to the Long-tailed Humming-bird. 



"And here at any time we may, with tolerable certainty, calculate on finding these very 

 lovely birds. But it is in March, April, and May that they abound. I suppose I have some- 

 times seen not fewer than a hundred come successively to rifle the blossoms within the space 

 of half as many yards, in the course of a forenoon. They are, however, in no respect gre- 

 garious ; though three or four may at one moment be hovering round the blossoms of the 

 same bed, there is no association ; each is governed by his individual preference, and each 

 attends to his own affairs. 



" It is worthy of remark, that males uniformly form the greater portion of the individuals 

 observed at this elevation. I do not know why it should be so, but we see very few females 

 there, whereas, in the lowlands, this sex outnumbers the other. In March, a large number 

 a,re found to be clad in the livery of the adult male, but without long tail-feathers ; others have 

 the characteristic feathers lengthened, but in various degrees. These are, I have no doubt, 

 males of the preceding season. 



"It is also quite common to find one of the long tail-feathers much shorter than the 

 other, which I account for by concluding that the shorter is replacing one that had been acci- 

 dentally lost. In their aeriel encounters with each other a tail-feather is sometimes displaced. 

 One day, several of these ' young bloods ' being together, a regular tumiilt ensued, somewhat 

 similar to a sparrow-fight ; such twittering, and fluttering, and dartings hither and thither. 

 I could not exactly make out the matter, but suspected that it was mainly an attack surely 

 an ungallant one made by them upon two females of the same species that were sucking 

 at the same bud. These were certainly in the skirmish, but the evolutions were too rapid 

 to be certain how the battle went. 



"The whirring made by the vibrating wings of the male Polytmus is a shriller sound 

 than that produced by the female, and indicates its proximity before the eye has detected it. 

 The male almost constaptly utters a monotonous quiet chirp, both while resting on a twig or 

 while circling from flower to flower. They do not invariably probe flowers on the wing ; one 

 very frequently observes them thus engaged when alighted and sitting with closed wings ; 

 and often they partially sustain themselves by clinging by the feet to a leaf while sucking, the 

 wings being expanded and vibrating." 



Several of these beautiful birds were captured and tamed by Mr. Gosse, who, however. 



