RUFF-NECKED HUMMING BIRD. 
TROCHILUS RUFUS, GMEL. 
PLATE CCCLXXIX. Mate anp Femate. 
Tis charming Humming Bird was discovered by the great navi- 
gator, Captain Cook, who found it abundant at Nootka Sound. It 
does not appear to have been seen by Dr Ricnarpson or Mr Drom- 
MOND in the northern parts of America, traversed by those most zealous 
and highly talented naturalists. As no account has hitherto been,given 
of its habits, the following notices from my friends Mr Nurratt and 
Dr Townsenp, will, I doubt not, prove highly interesting. 
“We began,” says the first of these enterprising travellers, “ to meet 
with this species near the Blue Mountains of the Columbia River, in 
the autumn, as we proceeded to the west. These were all young birds, 
and were not very easily distinguished from those of the common spe- 
cies of the same age. We now for the first time (April 16.) saw the 
males in numbers, darting, burring, and squeaking in the usual manner 
of their tribe ; but when engaged in collecting its accustomed sweets 
in all the energy of life, it seemed like a breathing gem, or magic car- 
buncle of glowing fire, stretching out its gorgeous ruff, as if to emulate 
the sun itself in splendour. ‘Towards the close of May, the females 
were sitting, at which time the males were uncommonly quarrelsome 
and vigilant, darting out at me as I approached the tree probably near 
the nest, looking like an angry coal of brilliant fire, passing within 
very little of my face, returning several times to the attack, sinking and 
darting with the utmost velocity, at the same time uttering a curious 
reverberating sharp bleat, somewhat similar to the quivering twang of 
a dead twig, yet also so much like the real bleat of some small quadru- 
ped, that for some time I searched the ground instead of the air, for 
the actor in the scene. At other times, the males were seen darting 
up high in the air, and whirling about each other in great anger, and 
with much velocity. After these manceuvres the aggressor returned to 
the same dead twig, where for days he regularly took his station with 
all the courage and angry vigilance of a King-bird. The angry hissing 
or bleating note of this species seems something like wht’t’t’t’t sh vee, 
