540 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



The ornithologist usually is cruel and ungrateful to the creatures which give him such 

 pleasure, but once in a while his sentiment gets the better of him. 



We have above said that the sun-birds ' represent ' the humming-birds in the Old 

 World, but we might just as well reverse the comparison a little, and say that the 

 honey-creepers (CCEREBID^E) in the New World 'represent' the sun-birds. The 

 thin, curved bill, and the richness and character of the coloration of the typical 

 species are equally suggestive, and the tongue is also bifid and penicillated at the end, 

 though not tubular. The small ultramarine blue creepers with yellow wing-marks 

 ( Ccereba cyanea) and allies from Central and South America, and the banana-quits 

 (Certhiold) from the West Indies and northern parts of South America, are familiar 

 examples. One species of the latter, viz., C, bahamensis, has a claim of belonging to 

 the fauna of the United States, in as much as it occurs in Florida. It has a pure 

 white throat, and is thereby easily distinguished, even in the cut, from the species 

 here figured, C.flaveola, from Jamaica, which, as the drawing shows, has the throat 

 gray. Mr. Gosse speaks of this interesting species as follows : " Scarcely larger than 

 the average size of the humming-birds, this little creeper is often seen in company 

 with them, probing the same flowers and for the same purpose, but in a very different 

 manner. Instead of hovering in front of each blossom, a task to which its short 

 wings would be utterly incompetent, the quit alights on the tree, and proceeds in the 

 most business-like manner to peep into the flowers, hopping actively from twig to 

 twig, and throwing the body into all positions, often clinging by the feet, with the 

 back downwards, the better to reach the interior of a blossom with his curved beak 

 and pencilled tongue. The minute insects which are always found in the interior of 

 flowers are the objects of his search and the reward of his perseverance." 



It is very doubtful, however, if the foregoing family Coerebidae really deserves 

 that name, for it seems impossible to draw a hard and fast line between it and that of 

 our American warblers, and probably it should therefore be merged into the MNIO- 

 TILTID^E in any future attempt at a natural system. The group of birds which we 

 have reached now, is so familiar both in appearance and in habits to North American 

 readers, that I can dispense with any further description beyond noting that they 

 are strictly confined to the western hemisphere. But as a 'natural history of birds' 

 would be highly defective without at least part of a life-history of one of the war- 

 blers, and as it would be beyond the power of the present writer to improve on the 

 delightful sketches which Mr. W. Brewster has given to the ornithological public, a 

 few abstracts of the biography of the prothonotary warbler (Protonotaria citrea) 

 by the latter are here introduced: "In general activity and restlessness few birds 

 equal the species under consideration. Not a nook or corner of his domain but is 

 repeatedly visited during the day. Now he sings a few times from the top of some 

 tall willow that leans out over the stream, sitting motionless among the yellowish 

 foliage, fully aware, perhaps, of the protection afforded by its harmonizing tints. 

 The next moment he descends to the cool shades beneath, where dark, coffee-colored 

 water, the overflow of the pond or river, stretches back among the trees. Here he 

 loves to hop about on floating drift-wood, wet by the lapping of pulsating wavelets, 

 now following up some long, inclining, half-submerged log, peeping into every crevice 

 and occasionally dragging forth from its concealment a spider or small beetle, turn- 

 ing alternately his bright yellow breast and olive back towards the light ; now jetting 

 his beautiful tail or quivering his wings tremulously, he darts off into some thicket in 

 response to a call from his mate ; or, flying to a neighboring tree-trunk, clings for a 



