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Volume VII May-June 1905 Number 3 
Hummingbird Studies 
BY WILLIAM LOVELL FINLEY 
ILLUSTRATED BY HERMAN T. BOHLMAN 
I WAS standing on the hillside one May morning when two hummers caught 
my attention. One whirred downward like the rush of a rocket. He ascended, 
whirling up till I could see only a blurred speck in the blue. Then he dropped 
headlong like a red meteor, with his gorget puffed out and his tail spread wide. 
Instead of striking with a burst of flying sparks, he veered just above the bushes 
with a sound like the lash of a whip drawn swiftly through the air, and, as the 
impetus carried him up, a high-pitched whistle burst in above the whir of his 
wings. Again and again he swung back and forth like a comet in its orbit. If 
he was courting, his aim was surely to dazzle and move with irresistable charm. 
I think his method was to sweep at his lady-love with a show of glittering brilliancy 
and gorgeous display and win her heart in one grand charge. 
He must have won her for they took up a homestead in the Virginia creeper 
just at the edge of the porch. I saw her collecting spider webs and down from the 
thistles, and then as I watched her building, it looked to me as if a bill for probing 
flowers were not suitable for weaving nests. Perhaps it would have been more 
convenient at times if it had been shorter, but she wove in the webs and fibers, 
whirred around and around and shaped the sides of her tiny cup as a potter moulds 
his master-piece. Then she thatched the outside with irregular bits of lichen. 
The rufous hummingbird ( Selasphorus rufus) seems to adapt itself better to 
the Oregon climate than many of the other birds. A hard rain creates havoc 
among the birds in nesting time but this hummer has profited by the experience 
of the past. Out of twenty-three different hummingbird nests, I found the major- 
