GOATSUCKERS, HUMMING-BIRDS, ETC. 243 



species have been found within the limits of the countiy. 

 Most of the hummers are honey-lovers, and they extract 

 the sweetest juices of the flowers. 



The "soft susurrations" of their wings as they poise 

 above the flowers, inserting their long beaks into tubes of 

 nectar, announce their presence. 



The nests of the humming-birds are of cup shape and 

 turban shape, are composed chiefly of plant-down, inter- 

 woven and bound together with spider webs and decorated 

 with lichens and mosses. Usually the nest is saddled upon a 

 horizontal or slanting branch or twig. 



"Dwelling in the snowy regions of the Andes are the 

 little gems called Hill-stars," says Leander S. Keyser, 

 "which build a structure as large as a man's head, at the 

 top of which there is a small cup-shaped depression. In 

 these dainty structures the eggs are laid, lying like gems in 

 the bottom of the cups, and here the little ones are hatched. 

 Some of them look more like bugs than birds when they 

 first come from the shell." 



THE RIVOLI HUMMING-BIRD* 



The Rivoli, or the Refulgent Humming-bird, as it is fre- 

 quently called, has a very limited range. It is found in the 

 "mountains of southeastern Arizona, southwestern New 

 Mexico, and over the table lands of Mexico," southward to 

 Nicaragua. It is one of the largest and most beautiful of 

 the humming-birds that frequent the United States. Its 

 royal appearance led Lesson, in the year 1829, to name it 

 Rivoh, in honor of ^I. ^lassena, the Duke of Rivoh. It is 



