THE HUMMINGBIRD. 363 



All careful observers bear testimony to the remarkable 

 pugnacity of the Martin, which attacks successfully the 

 Hawks and Owls generally, and even the Eagle, and so 

 pesters them as to drive them from the neighborhood, thus 

 securing more or less protection for the Domestic Fowl. It 

 will join common cause with the Kingbird, or it will attack 

 the Kingbird in turn and compel him to flee. 



Wintering in the tropics, the Black Martin ranges 

 throughout the United States and far north into Canada, 

 breeding nearly throughout its range. It reaches New 

 York late in April, and leaves late in August or early in 

 September. Late in August they Sometimes assemble in 

 large flocks, after the manner of the Swallows generally, 

 preparatory to their southward flight. 



THE HUMMINGBIRD. 



As I am gazing on that Tartarian honeysuckle — a thing 

 of splendid beauty, with its abundant sprays of blossoms of 

 snowy white and bright purple set off by an exuberance of 

 dark-green leaves — a Ruby- throated Hummingbird (Tra- 

 chilus colubris) shoots around the house and hums in front 

 of the clusters of blossoms. There are many birds, the 

 flight of Which is so rapid that the strokes of their wings 

 cannot be counted, but here is a species with such nerve 

 of wing that its wing-strokes cannot be seen. "A hazy 

 semicircle of indistinctness on each side of the bird is all 

 that is perceptible." Poised in the air, his body nearly 

 at the perpendicular, he seems to hang in front of the flow- 

 ers, which he probes so hurriedly, one after the other, with 

 his long slender bill. That long, tubular, fork-shaped tongue 

 may be sucking up the nectar from those rather small cylin- 

 drical blossoms, or it may be capturing tiny insects housed 

 away there. Much more like a large sphinx moth, hover- 



