Feeding humming birds during seven summers.



381



be a male. When in full plumage he should be a gaily coloured bird.


The long-tailed grassfinches mentioned reared a brood and

they have developed a taste for insect food. They now eat quite a

number of gentles, earwigs, and, in fact, anything in the way of

insects.


My old pair of gouldian finches have now (August) two broods

out of the nest; eleven in all. With me these so-called “ unsatis¬

factory ” birds give no trouble at all. They are tame and hardy

and most prolific.


I feel sure that more gouldians are killed by hard water than

by any other cause. Here our only water supply is rain water and

it suits birds very well.



EXPERIMENTS IN FEEDING HUMMING

BIRDS DURING SEVEN SUMMERS.


By Althea R. Sherman,


National, Ioiva.


(Concluded from page 332).


One is led to wonder if the Homeric gods on high Olympus

were more deeply stirred by the appearance among them of the

youthful Ganymede bearing cups of nectar than are the humming

birds at sight of their cupbearer. When several of them are present

the wildest confusion reigns. Possibly not one of them is in sight

when the door is passed, yet instantly the air seems filled with them :

some swinging back and forth in the air, squeaking and fighting', or

darting from bottle to bottle thrusting in their bills as they pass,

while an overbold one will buzz about my head, sometimes coming

under the porch in her zeal for the meeting ; but the timorous ones

fly from their perches into sight over the bottles, then back into a

bush. Some one of these types of behavior marks the bird boarder

from the migrant. The latter pays no attention to cupbearer or

bottle, but diligently searches each bunch of blossoms. For two or

three weeks after the drinking birds have left there is occasionally

a migrant among the natural flowers. The bottles are full of syrup,

but it passes them unheedfully.


Habits seem to change when steady drinking is practiced, but



