The Birds and Poets 149 



Bluebirds, snow buntings and humming birds also 

 migrate by day. Ducks, gulls, geese, plover and 

 snipe travel by night or by day, as the fancy moves 

 them, depending largely upon weather conditions 

 and the opportunities for feeding. 



The tiny humming bird, traveling by day, all 

 the way from northern United States to Central 

 America, is one of the many wonders of migration. 

 This little flash of tropic color is so small that he 

 often shelters his tiny lichen-covered nest under a 

 single leaf, and yet when autumn comes he boldly 

 darts away to his winter home, thousands of miles 

 distant, through 



"The desert and illimitable air 

 Lone wandering but not lost" 



Buffbn in his "Natural History" gives the 

 following exquisite description of the humming 

 bird: 



"Of all animated beings this is the most elegant in 

 form and the most brilliant in colors. The stones and 

 metals polished by our arts are not comparable to this 

 jewel of Nature. She has placed it least in size of 

 the order of birds, maxime miranda in minimis. Her 

 master piece is the little humming-bird, and upon it she 

 has heaped all the gifts which the other birds may 

 only share. Lightness, rapidity, nimbleness, grace, and 

 rich apparel all belong to this little favorite. The 

 emerald, the ruby and the topaz gleam upon its dress. 

 It never soils them with the dust of earth, and in its 



