268 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



HABITS. 



The general habits of Humming Birds are in most respects similar to 

 those of other birds. They are both arboreal and aerial, but are unable 

 to progress upon the ground, or any flat surface, by means of their legs 

 and feet alone. They perch frequently upou trees or bushes, or even 

 in rare instances cling to rocks ; and their mode of nidification presents 

 nothing that may be deemed peculiar or even specially characteristic. 

 Iu their flight and manner of procuring their food, however, they differ 

 strikingly from other birds, iu these respects much more closely resem- 

 bling certain insects than any of the " feathered tribe." 



Says Prof. Alfred Newton : 



Wilson, Audubon, Mr. Gosse, and several others, gifted with the "pen of a ready 

 writer," have so fully described, as far as words will admit, the habits of different mem- 

 bers of the family Trochilidce that it is unuecessary to say much upon this score. Their 

 appearauce is soentirely unlike that of any other birds that it is hopeless to attempt iu 

 any way to bring a just conception of it to the ideas of those who have not crossed 

 the Atlantic ; and even the comparison so often made between them and the Spliingi- 

 dw, though doubtless in the main true, is much to the advantage of the latter. One 

 is admiring the clustering stars of a scarlet Cordia, the snowy cornucopias of a Port- 

 landia, or some other brilliant and beautiful flower, when between the blossom and 

 one's eye suddenly appears a small dark object, suspended, as it were, between four 

 short black threads meeting each other in a cross. For an instant it shows in front of 

 the flower; au instant more itsteadies itself, and one perceives the space between each 

 pair of threads occupied by a gray film; again, another instant, and, emitting a mo- 

 mentary flash of emerald and sapphire light, it is vanishing, lessening iu the distance as 

 it shoots away to a speck that the eye can not take note of, aud all this so rapidly that 

 the word on one's lips is still unspoken, scarcely the thought in one's mind changed. 

 It was a bold man or an ignorant one who first ventured to depict Humming Birds 

 flyiug ; but it can not be denied that representations of them in that attitude are often 

 of special use to the ornithologist. The peculiar action of one, and probably of inauy 

 or all other species of the family, is such that at times, iu flying, it makes the wings 

 almost meet, both in front aud behind, at each vibration. Thus, when a bird chances to 

 enter a room it will generally go buzzing along the cornice ; standing beneath where 

 it is, one will find that the axis of the body is vertical, and each wing is describing 

 a nearly perfect semicircle. As might be expected, the pectoral muscles are very 

 large; indeed, the sternum of this bird is a good deal bigger than that of the common 

 Chimney-Swallow (Hirundo rustica, L.) But the extraordinary rapidity with which 

 the vibrations are effected seems to be chiefly caused by these powerful muscles acting 

 on the very short wing-bones, which are not half the length of the same parts in the 

 Swallow; and accordingly, great as this alar action is, aud iu spite of the contrary 

 opinion entertained by Mr. Gosse (Nat. Sojourn in Jamaica, p. 240), it is yet some- 

 times wanting in power, owing doubtless to the disadvantageous leverage thus ob- 

 tained ; and the old authors must bo credited who speak of cobwebs catching Hum- 

 ming Birds. 



Among the multitude of forms which compose this extensive family 

 of birds there must necessarily be some which depart, more or less, in 

 certain particulars as regards their habits, from the more typical kinds ; 

 but so far as their habits have been recorded, I have been able to find 

 only one example of unusual or extraordinary peculiarity in this respect, 

 namely, the curious habit of the Pichincha Hill-star (Oreotrochilus 



