58 
BIRDS OF DURHAM AND VICINITY. 
after nightfall, and it is not unusual to hear the roar of a swift comino; 
down chimney hours after other birds are asleep. The young appar- 
ently come from the nest able to care for themselves, for, though I can 
always make them out by their feeble flight, I have never seen one 
swift attempt to feed another away from the nest. 
The nest is made of small sticks, which are grasped in the bill and 
snapped from dead branches of trees as the swift files through. These 
sticks are cemented to the wall and to one another by a sort of glue, 
secreted by two large glands — one each side of the base of the tongue. 
Family TROCHILID.-E. 
Trochilus colubris. Rubv-theioated Hr.MMixGBiRD. 42S. 
The Hummingbird, so well known by every one, and so neighborly 
with those who cultivate flowers, is a hardier creature than many birds 
of larger size. I have seen it here as early as the thirteenth of ^l3.y 
when but tew flowers are to be seen and many warblers are yet to 
come, and as late as September 25. If it depended on nectar alone 
for subsistence it could not remain here so long by two or three weeks, 
but stomach examinations plainly show that insects form a large part 
of its diet, and thus we can account for its long stay in the northland. 
A single stomach which I have examined contained fragments of 
insects, and some pollen grains. Whether the pollen was taken 
voluntarily, or whether it came along with sundry hairy tibas which 
were present, I could only guess. After the beginning of September 
I have frequently observed them about the mill-pond, where there 
were no flowers, flying near the sliore, and now and then alighting. 
It is quite possible they were there for the purpose of catching insects, 
though I cannot so state. The nest is made late in June or early in 
July in a bush or tree. It is composed of felted cottony materials 
and covered with gray lichens, such as grow on the trunks of trees. I 
have found them nesting in beech, hemlock and apple trees. Although 
the Hummingbirds are flying most of the time, yet their legs and 
feet are sufficiently strong to hold them on a branch or telephone 
wire. Wires are as much to their liking as they are to swallows, and 
so far as my observations go are their commonest perch. The sexes 
may be easily distinguished at a distance. Only the male has the 
ruby throat, and only the female has white marks on its tail. 
