36 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 



IX. 



RUBY-THROATED HUMMING-BIRD. 



DID you ever see a humming-bird sitting on a 

 bare branch of a towering tree ? Until you have 

 you will scarcely appreciate what a wee mite of a 

 bird it is. Indeed I find it hard to think of it 

 as a bird at all. It seems more like a fairy, " a 

 glittering fragment of a rainbow," as Audubon 

 calls it, or as some one else has said, 



" Like a gem or a blossom on pinions," 



something too dainty and airy to have even three 

 inches of actual length. It seems like the winged 

 spirit of color as it comes humming through the 

 air to hover over the flowers on the piazza, its 

 body like green beryl, and its throat glancing fire. 

 Like Puck it might boast that it could " put a 

 girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," 

 for while we are wondering at its friendliness it 

 darts off and is gone like the flash of a diamond. 



In this vicinity the garden of Mrs. Bagg seems 

 to be one of the favorite haunts of the humming- 

 birds, and she has kindly given me some notes on 

 her experiences with them. She says : 



" In confinement they do not appear to pine for 

 freedom, beating themselves against the wires like 

 other birds, but seem contented and at home from 

 the first I kept a pair caged a whole summer, 



