Green, Greenish Gray, Olive, and Yellowish Olive Birds 
its surroundings that one may look long and thoroughly before 
discovering it. Two infinitesimal, white eggs tax the nest ac- 
commodation to its utmost. 
In the mating season the female may be seen perching — a 
posture one rarely catches her gay lover in — preening her dainty 
but sombre feathers with ladylike nicety. The young birds do a 
great deal of perching before they gain the marvellously rapid 
wing-motions of maturity, but they are ready to fly within a 
week after they are hatched. By the time the trumpet-vine is in 
bloom they dart and sip and utter a shrill little squeak among the 
flowers, in company with the old birds. 
During the nest-building and incubation the male bird keeps 
so aggressively on the defensive that he often betrays to a hitherto 
unsuspecting intruder the location of his home. After the young 
birds have to be fed he is most diligent in collecting food, that 
consists not alone of the sweet juices of flowers, as is popularly 
supposed, but also of aphides and plant-lice that his proboscis-like 
tongue licks off the garden foliage literally like a streak of lightning. 
Both parents feed the young by regurgitation — a process 
disgusting to the human observer, whose stomach involuntarily 
revolts at the sight so welcome to the tiny, squeaking, hungry 
birds. 
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 
(Regulus calendula) Kinglet family 
Called also: RUBY-CROWNED WREN; RUBY-CROWNED 
WARBLER 
Length — 4.25 to 4.5 inches. About two inches smaller than the 
English sparrow. 
Male — Upper parts grayish olive-green, brighter nearer the tail; 
wings and tail dusky, edged with yellowish olive. Two 
whitish wing-bars. Breast and underneath light yellowish 
gray. In the adult male a vermilion spot on crown of his 
ash-gray head. 
Fetnale — Similar, but without the vermilion crest. 
Range — North America. Breeds from northern United States 
northward. Winters from southern limits of its breeding 
range to Central America and Mexico. 
Migrations — October. April. Rarely a winter resident at the 
North. Most common during its migrations. 
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