Humming-birds 103 



species make a shrill, screeching noise, something like that 

 made by a rapidly revolving circular saw when rubbed by 

 a splinter, when the males were driving off any other 

 Humming-bird from the vicinity of their nests. At these 

 times the little aggressor would rise to a considerable 

 height in the air, and descend upon its enemy like a flash 

 of lightning. 



Irritability and curiosity are the characteristics of the 

 Humming-birds, and sometimes the tiny creatures will hover 

 right in the face of an intruder, and they often show but 

 little shyness with human beings, though, when kept in 

 confinement, they do not long survive. They fight con- 

 tinually with one another in a wild state, and will even 

 attack birds of far greater bulk than themselves. Of the 

 way in which they hover in flight, Mr. Robert Ridgway, in 

 his essay on the Humming-birds, has given a figure in his 

 account of Calothorax lucifer from Mexico, which is here 

 copied (p. 90). 



In South America we meet with some birds which 

 illustrate what I would call plain or simple decoration, as 

 opposed to the gaudy decoration of the Birds of Paradise 

 and the Humming-birds. Examples of this are seen in the 

 Bell-birds and the Umbrella-birds, as they are called. The 

 common Bell-bird {Chasmorhynchus niveus) is an inhabitant 

 of Guiana, and in addition to its snowy- white plumage, which 

 in itself is beautiful enough, it has also a simple ornamenta- 

 tion in the scantily-feathered horn which is found on the 

 forehead of the male, and is capable of being raised at will 

 when the bird is calling and uttering the clear metallic 

 cry from which it derives its popular name. The female, 

 on the other hand, is of a dull greenish colour. That the 

 horn on the fore part of the crown is actually ornamental 

 and serves no functional purpose, is evident from the fact 

 that the allied species, the Three-wattled Bell-bird from 

 Central America {Chasmorhynchus tricarunculatus), has three 



