More about Humming Birds



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cage. In colour the body was rich dark purple-blue, with a brilliant

throat of scintillating green ; the wings and tail black, the latter forked.


It is hateful and horrible to lose such a rarity, whose like one may

never see again. When I looked at the tiny body I could not but

sigh and say : “ Why was he ever taken from his Venezuelan forest


home ? ”



MORE ABOUT HUMMING BIRDS


Professor A. A. Allen, of Cornell University, recently published in

Scribners Magazine an instructive and entertaining account of the

nesting of Humming Birds. An epitome of this may perhaps interest

members of the Society, and form a fitting sequel to Mr. Astley’s

article. 1


By good fortune, it appears, a female of one of these feathered

jewels elected to nest in a pear-tree ha a back yard in America, the

choice of site affording the opportunity to keep her and her doings under

observation. During the days of courtship the male was much in

evidence, rocketing back and forth, with throat ablaze aiad wings

humming before the female demurely perched on some dead twig.

But with the laying of the first egg, his interest in the proceedings

ceased, and off he went to a bachelor life, leaving to the female the sole

charge of the family. The making of the entire nest was also left to the

energies of the prospective laiother. The nest, made of cotton and coated

outside with bits of bark and lichen to make it look like a mere

excrescence on the branch to which it was fasteiaed by means of cob¬

webs, was no bigger than a walnut. Two tiny white eggs were laid in

it on consecutive days soon after it was finished. She tended them

assiduously, turning them with her probe-like bill, and only leaving

them for short periods to catch the insects necessary for her own

sustenance. She was absolutely without fear of human beings, and

would allow anyone to stroke her as she sat or remove her from the

nest, even perching confidingly and without resentmeiat upon the finger

of the hand that disturbed her. The period of incubation was exactly

fifteen days for each egg ; and the naked atoms that emerged, no larger


1 This account is taken from The Literary Digest, 8th April, 1922, for which the

Editors are indebted to Mr. Astley.



