88 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS 



climates. Two kinds come up as far north as 

 Canada in the summer, one lives in the cold 

 miserable climate of the straits of Magellan 

 at the other end of America, and some keep 

 high up in the Andes close to the snows of the 

 mountain-tops. The real difficulty in keeping 

 them is in finding some food which will take 

 the place of the tiny insects they eat, for they 

 cannot live long on nothing but honey ; con- 

 densed milk suits them fairly well, being 

 animal food, and no doubt some one will 

 succeed with humming-birds sooner or later. 

 At any rate one was once kept in Italy for 

 eight months. 



Some people seem to think that because 

 humming-birds are tiny like insects, and fly 

 like them, they have not more intelligence 

 than these creatures ; but I feel sure that this 

 is wrong, and that they are quite as clever as 

 any other little birds. They certainly are not 

 nervous or easily upset ; one of the smallest 

 kinds they had at the Zoo escaped in the 

 Insect House and buzzed all round it for some 

 time, never bumping against the glass as any 

 other bird would have done ; at last it became 

 tired out and fell down on to a cage where 



