Bird- Nesting with Burroughs 



91 



Just at this point I take occasion to introduce a picture of a 

 Hummer poised before a flower made later in the season, but which 

 serves very well to represent the appearance of Mr. Burroughs' bird 

 while visiting his honeysuckles gathering food for her young. It will be 

 observed that the filmy halo, constituting the wings of the Hummer in 

 flight, does not appear in this picture, and nevertheless it was made, if 

 my focal-plane shutter scale does not prevaricate, in less than a five- 

 hundredth part of a second. 



On one occasion we observed another Hummer in the vicinity, a 

 bird that flew directly up to the one on the nest, and evidently looked 



HUMMER BROODING YOUNG 



her straight in the eyes, but for so small a fragment of time that we 

 do not know whether it was a male or female. At any rate, the bird 

 seemed to be quite familiar with the air-line to the nest, though, as 

 Mr. Burroughs said, it is possible that Hummers may have an eye for 

 Hummers' nests. 



Fully as unapproachable was a Flicker, who, when we tapped gently 

 at the base of her home in an old cherry stub, left the exit above 

 with a precipitation defying the speed of a lens shutter. While techni- 

 cally a failure, the picture of her hasty departure, nevertheless, forms an 

 interesting study in the use of the wing in flight. It will be observed 

 that, although a third of the bird still remains in the hole, the wing 



