242 



USEFUL BIRDS. 



tiny eggs, about the size and color of pea beans, lying on 

 their soft, downy bed, is the prettiest bird home to be found 

 in our orchards or woodlands. The nest is often built in an 

 apple or pear tree in the orchard, sometimes in a rose bush 

 in the garden, not quite as often in the woods ; but I once 

 found two nests, with eggs, in high trees on the face of a 

 precipitous cliff overlooking a lake. Although the nest in 

 such situations is usually covered with lichens taken from 

 the surrounding rocks or trees, the birds sometimes use other 

 material. Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright avers that she found a 

 nest in the top of a spruce, some sixty feet from the' ground, 

 and that the nest was covered with flakes of spruce bark, 

 instead of lichens. The nest is begun in June, and is about 

 five or six days in the building. The eggs are incubated 

 about eight or ten days, and the young remain in the nest 

 usually, I believe, over three weeks, although Audubon's 

 observations do not agree with this. They are very tiny 

 when first hatched, and grow at first rather slowly, for birds ; 

 but later they grow so rapidly that the nest, which is at first 

 a neat cup, is extended by their swelling bodies until its 

 interior more nearly resembles a saucer than a cup. 



The nest represented in the accompanying illustrations 

 was built in an apple tree in Concord. On July 3, when 



the young were probably 

 about two weeks old, the first 

 sketch was made. As will 

 be seen (Fig. 100), the birds 

 were still very small, and cov- 

 ered with down and pinfeathers. 

 Their bills were quite short, and the 

 quills of the wings were not developed. 

 The sketch taken just a week later (Fig. 

 102) shows them with their bills fully 

 developed, their bodies well-feathered and 



Fig. 100. — Hum- 

 mingbirds about 

 two weeks old, 

 one-half natural 

 size. 



full-winged, nearly ready for flight. As the 

 young Hummers are fed mainly on minute in- 

 sects and small or young spiders, a large number of the tiny 

 creatures must be sacrificed to supply the aliment necessary 

 for the astounding growth of a week. Some authors assert 



