FLYCATCHERS 337 
America, and is to be confounded with nothing but sphinx (hum- 
mingbird) moths. One hears of ‘‘Hummingbirds” seen in the evening 
about flower-beds. The mistake is not unnatural, and a correction is 
sometimes received with incredulity. The birds spend but a compara- 
tively small part of the time upon the wing. Whoever watches a female 
busy about her nest will see her constantly perching here and there 
in certain branches of the tree, preening her plumage and looking 
about her. The male, at the same season, forgetful, to all appearance, 
of his conjugal and parental duties, may be found at home day after 
day on a dead twig in some tall tree, where he sits so constantly as to 
make the observer wonder what he can be about, and when, if ever, he 
takes his food. Further investigation, however, will show that he makes 
frequent and regular rounds of favorite feeding-places. A tall blue- 
berry bush, for example, will be visited at short intervals as long as the 
observer has patience to stand beside it. The Hummingbird is curiously 
fearless. Sometimes one will probe a flower held in the hand, and when 
they fly into houses, as they pretty often do, they manifest but the 
smallest degree of suspicion, and will feed almost at once upon sugar 
held between the lips. The old bird feeds the young by regurgitation— 
a frightful-looking act—the food consisting largely of minute insects. 
The young remain in the nest for some three weeks, and on leaving 
it are at once at home on the wing. BRADFORD TORREY. 
XVII. ORDER PASSERES. PERCHING BIRDS. (Fig. 58.) 
“Doubtless every order of birds has had its day when, if it were not 
a dominant type, it was at least sufficiently near it to be considered 
modern; and as we review what is known to us of that great series of 
feathered forms, from the Archzopteryx to the Thrushes, we can rea- 
lize how varied has been the characteristic avifauna of each succeeding 
epoch from the Jurassic period to the present. 
“Now has come the day of the order Passeres, the Perching Birds; 
here belong our Flycatchers, Orioles, Jays, Sparrows, and Finches, 
Vireos, Swallows, Wrens, Thrushes, and many others. A recent author- 
ity classifies birds in thirty-four orders, but fully one-half of the 
13,000 known species are included in the single order Passeres’’ 
(‘‘Bird-Life’’). 
All our Passerine birds are born in an almost naked condition, having 
only a mere trace of down on the feather-tracts of the upperparts of 
the body. At its full development this natal down presents a soft, 
fluffy appearance over the cowering nestlings. It is pushed outward 
by the feathers of the juvenal plumage, to the tips of which portions of 
it may be seen adhering when the young bird leaves the nest. With 
some passerine birds (e. g., Song Sparrow) this is at the end of only 
seven days (Owen, Auk, 1899, p. 222). Compare this surprisingly rapid 
development with that of a Noddy Tern, for instance, which does not 
