FIELD AND STUDY 



of myrtle warblers snapping up the gauzy- winged 

 insects that hovered above the water in the fitful 

 sunshine. What loops and lines of color they made, 

 now perched on the stones, now on the twigs of the 

 overhanging trees, now hovering, now swooping! 

 What an animated scene they presented! They had 

 struck a rare find and were making the most of it. 



On other occasions I saw the magnolia and Cape 

 May and chestnut-sided warblers under the same 

 stress of food-shortage searching in unwonted places. 

 One bedraggled and half-starved female magnolia 

 warbler lingered eight or ten days in a row of Jap- 

 anese barberry-bushes under my window, where 

 she seemed to find some minute and, to me, invisible 

 insect on the leaves and in the blossoms that seemed 

 worth her while. 



This row of barberry-bushes was the haunt for 

 a week or more of two or three male ruby-throated 

 hummingbirds. Not one female did we see, but two 

 males were often there at the same time, and some- 

 times three. They came at all hours and probed the 

 clusters of small greenish-yellow blossoms, and 

 perched on the twigs of intermingled lilacs, often 

 remaining at rest five or six minutes at a time. 

 They chased away the big queen bumble-bees 

 which also reaped a harvest there, and occasionally 

 darted spitefully at each other. The first day I saw 

 them, they appeared to be greatly fatigued, as if 

 they had just made the long journey from Central 

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