The Anna Hummer 
that however much the average diet may be varied by insect food, the 
nectar of plants is still the staple element with most species. Professor 
and Mrs. Charles Frederick Holder, of Pasadena, once kept an Anna 
Hummer within doors for nearly a year on a diet of sugar-and-water 
varied only by offerings of flowers. Miss Althea R. Sherman, of National, 
Iowa, in a series of open-air experiments with the Ruby-throated Hummer, 
found that the creatures will consume an average of from 70 to 90 grains 
of pure sugar daily, an amount equal to a cube of bar sugar or a level 
teaspoonful of common ‘granulated’ sugar. This amount, moreover, 
is more than twice the average weight of the bird. If we humans were 
determined upon such high living, we should have to consume 300 pounds 
of sugar apiece per diem! Alas, for daddy’s purse, and alas for our 
poor livers! 
Anna’s Hummer is fond of the sap of our common willows (Salix 
Icevigata and 5 . lasiolepis ). It will also follow the Red-breasted Sapsucker 
(Sphyrapicus ruber ) into the orchards and glean eagerly from its deserted 
borings. A catalogue of Anna’s favorite flowers would be nearly equiva¬ 
lent to a botany of southern California. But if one had to choose the 
favorite it would probably be Ribes speciosum, our handsome red flowering 
gooseberry, for it is upon the abundance of this flower that Anna relies 
for her early nesting. In watching a female feeding in one of these 
bushes we were interested to note that because of the density of the 
foliage the bird felt obliged to alight, and did so whenever favorable 
opportunity offered. At times it would discontinue the wing motion 
altogether and would rifle the neighboring flowers from its perch. At 
others the wing stroke was only retarded to such a degree as to become 
noiseless, but was still too rapid for the eye to follow. The bird threaded 
the mazes of the shrub fearlessly and there was frequent sound of contact 
between wing and foliage, but it is certain that the bird took care to avoid 
the fierce-looking thorns which beset the plant, and which would seem 
to a novice sufficient to have discouraged entrance altogether. Once 
the bird clung to the under side of a twig, Chickadee-fashion, and if 
Brooks had drawn her so in his plate, every ornithaster would have 
scouted. 
But Anna is a bit of a flycatcher too. She will buzz off a twig 
to make connection with some object to us invisible, or she will quit 
her nest to rescue some victim of the spider’s toils, and, perchance, 
to gobble the ogress herself. In these and other ways a heavy grist of 
little beetles, flies, spiders, tree-hoppers, and tiny wasps goes to the 
account of that winged furnace of high caloric. Insects are fed to the 
babies at a very tender age, according to one authority within 24 hours 
of their hatching. 
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