252 RUBY-THROATED HUMMING BIRD. 



pert fly-catcher. The nectar or honey which they sip from the different 

 flowers, being of itself insufficient to support them, is used more as if to 

 allay their thirst. I have seen many of these birds kept in partial confine- 

 ment, when they were supplied with artificial flowers made for the pur- 

 pose, in the corollas of which water with honey or sugar dissolved in it 

 was placed. The birds were fed on these substances exclusively, but sel- 

 dom lived many months, and on being examined after death, were found 

 to be extremely emaciated. Others, on the contrary, which were supplied 

 twice Hr-day with fresh flowers from the woods or garden, placed in a room 

 with windows merely closed with moschetto gauze-netting, through which 

 minute insects were able to enter, lived twelve months, at the expiration 

 of which time their hberty was granted them, the person who kept them 

 having had a long royage to perform. The room was kept artificially 

 warm during the winter months, and these, in Lower Louisiana, are sel- 

 dom so cold as to produce ice. On examining an orange-tree which had 

 been placed in the room where these Humming Birds were kept, no ap- 

 pearance of a nest was to be seen, although the birds had frequently been 

 observed caressing each other. Some have been occasionally kept con- 

 fined in our Middle Districts, but I have not ascertained that any one sur- 

 vived a winter. 



The Humming Bird does not shun mankind so much as birds gene- 

 rally do. It frequently approaches flowers in the windows, or even in 

 rooms when the windows are kept open, during the extreme heat of the 

 day, and returns, when not interrupted, as long as the flowers are unfaded. 

 They are extremely abundant in Louisiana during spring and summer, 

 and wherever a fine plant of the trumpet-flower is met with in the woods, 

 one or more Humming Birds are generally seen about it, and now and 

 then so many as ten or twelve at a time. They are quarrelsome, and have 

 frequent battles in the air, especially the male birds. Should one be 

 feeding on a flower, and another approach it, they are both immediately 

 seen to rise in the air, twittering and twirling in a spiral manner until out 

 of sight. The conflict over, the victor immediately returns to the flower. 



If comparison might enable you, kind reader, to form some tolerably 

 accurate idea of their peculiar mode of flight, and their appearance when 

 on wing, I would say, that were both objects of the same colour, a large 

 sphinx or moth, when moving from one flower to another, and in a direct 

 line, comes nearer the Humming Bird in aspect than any other object with 

 which I am acquainted. 



