Experiments in Feeding Hummingbirds 165 



visited them. It chanced on July 14 that the stick support 

 of No. 4 was lying on the ground, leaving only No. 6 in po- 

 sition, when my sister saw a Hummingbird thrusting her 

 bill into it. She hastened to fill this bottle, which was the 

 first time it had ever been filled, and it lacked but eight days of 

 two full years since it was first set out. Six days later I was 

 in the orchard a hundred feet or more distant from the bot- 

 tles, when a Hummingbird flew toward me and buzzed about 

 my head as do no' other birds except those that are fed. 

 With greatly accelerated pulse I hurried to the house and 

 filled the bottles. In exactly two minutes the Hummingbird 

 was drinking from one of them ; this was the first drinking 

 witnessed in that year. It was one of my most thrilling ex- 

 periences in bird study. Two marvelously long journeys of 

 from one to two thousand miles each had this small sprite 

 taken since last she had drunk from the bottles, yet she had 

 not forgotten them, nor the one that fed her. She was quite 

 prone to remind either of us when the bottles were empty 

 by flying about our heads, wherever she chanced to find us, 

 whether in the yard or in the street. Once having been long 

 neglected she nearly flew into my face as I opened the barn 

 door to step out. 



The last experiment made was that of flavoring one of 

 the bottles of syrup with vanilla, and later with extract of 

 lemon, to see if the birds showed preference for the plain 

 syrup or for the flavored. Both kinds were served at the 

 same time, and of both the birds drank, showing no choice 

 that could be detected. 



It may already have been surmised from the gender of the 

 pronoun used, that it is the female only of this species that 

 has the "sweet tooth." Never once in the seven summers 

 has a male Ruby-throat been seen near a bottle. The drink- 

 ing birds have been examined long and critically, with binoc- 

 ular and without, in order to detect on some of the birds the 

 identification marks of the young males, but without success ; 

 moreover, had young males been present they, too, would 

 have been apt to return in later years. This absence of the 



