THE PUGNACITY OF SMALL BIRDS. 27 



" Little birds sit on the telegraph wires, 



And chitter and flitter and fold their wings ; 

 And perhaps they think that for them and their sire3 

 Stretched always on purpose these wonderful strings." 



Between the showers one of those royal fellows, the king-bird (which 

 Southern people call " bee - martins "), came over the fields with a self- 

 confident swing in his flight, and alighted on a sapling. He had stood 

 there not a minute — no, not half a minute — when up sprang my two 

 wrens from their perch on the highest beam of the bridge, and dashed 

 at him like little furies. The surprise and impetuosity of that attack 

 was too much for him, and though he asserted that more than once he 

 had driven the mighty eagle to find safety in the clouds, yet these little 

 tormentors upset his courage, and he fled as fast as his wings could carry 

 him. The wrens, still unsatisfied, rushed after, and I could hear the sharp 

 snipping of their bills, like the quick shutting of scissors. It must have 

 sounded very terrible indeed to the poor king-bird, for the pursuers kept 

 close to his ears in spite of all he could do. 



It seems to be almost a law among birds that their " spirit " is in direct 

 proportion to their littleness. Warblers, kinglets, and wrens are all plucky 

 and pugnacious, while the daring courage of hummingbirds has often been 

 marked with surprise by those who have studied them. They will fight 

 anything whatever that interferes with them, and dart with such lightning 

 rapidity at the object of their hatred, picking at the eyes with their 

 needle-like beaks, that they drive away the enemy by small but persistent 

 torments as effectually as. if they did it by force. Nor is this a useless 

 quality in the least of the feathered host, for he has to defend his home 

 quite as often, probably, as his larger associates. 



In the case of many of the hummingbirds, the nest is tucked into 

 a little bag formed by folding over the edges near the point of a long, 

 drooping leaf. This makes them inaccessible to most enemies, and very 

 secure. Other species place their homes in a crotch of a bush between 

 upright twigs ; while the ruby-throat — the 



"Bright little, light little, slight little hummer, 

 Lover of sunshine and lover of summer," 



who visits the "odorous bowers" of our northern greenhouses and gar- 

 dens — constructs a. cup of vegetable shreds, matted and glued together, 

 with a downy bed within, and saddles it upon the upper side of a limb of 

 some orchard or forest tree. -Only about twice as large as a thimble, 

 and covered with wood-lichens and bits of green moss, it looks so very 



