HUMMINGBIRDS: CALLIOPE HUMMINGBIRD 367 
Nest. —“In the Canadian or Transition Zone, placed near the end of a lower limb 
of a coniferous tree, usually overhanging a stream or at the edge of a forest opening. 
Compactly made of plant down, held in shape by a framework of green moss bound 
together by spider web and insect cocoon fibers; exterior protectingly colored with a 
thick layer of lichen scales” (Weydemeycr). Eggs: 2, white. 
General Habits. —Like the Broad-tailed, the charming little 
Calliope, one of our smallest United States hummingbirds, is a moun¬ 
tain-loving species, rarely breeding below 4,000 feet and found more 
often between 6,500 and 8,000 feet. At Sierra Grande, where Mr. 
Howell found it abundant, it was especially numerous about the moun¬ 
tain meadows near the summit, where paint brush and lupines abounded. 
In the Taos Mountains, at our Wheeler Peak camp of 11,400 feet 
altitude, as I was standing beside the tent, one of the tiny hummers, 
with the flaring rose-purplish and white-streaked gorget, lit on a willow 
twig only nine or ten feet from me and began preening its wet feathers. 
After deftly dressing its wings and tail it rose, and first flying a few feet 
toward me to investigate my red cap, turned and flew softly away—in 
striking contrast to the noisy Rufous and Broad-tailed. In the Hondo 
Valley on August 10, among the wild flowers bordering the fields, one 
adult male was seen with a noisy band of Rufous Hummers, while 
there were a number of little green females or young quietly moving 
about the flowers and bushes which we took for Calliopes. 
The interesting fact of the usual absence of the noisy, brilliantly 
colored male hummingbirds from the nesting ground, presumably for 
the protection of the young, was attested by Doctor Grinnell in his study 
of the Calliope. “ Only on one or two occasions,” he says, u did I ever see 
a male invade the canyon bottom where the female was nesting, and 
then he was routed out by the irate mother. There were, however, 
neutral tracts on the upper slopes, red with castillejas and pentstemons, 
where the males and females were seen together” (1908, p. 74). 
At Antonito; just across the Colorado line, late in August, several 
hummingbirds were found on the telegraph wires and in the small 
cottonwoods below—one Rufous and several Calliopes. A young male 
Calliope with touches of rose feathers in his gorget was flying up in 
the air and swooping down sometimes almost hitting a second one 
sitting on the fence. Unlike any other hummingbirds I had ever seen 
go through this aerial dance, in doing this the only noise made was a 
slight seething sound, as of the air through the wings. But the flight 
of Calliope, Mr. Woods states, is at times characterized by “a shrill, 
strident quality” not heard from other familiar hummingbirds. He also 
attests that the male produces at will “a loud buzzing like that made by 
a large fly entangled in a spider’s web” (1927, p. 301). Its atten¬ 
uated, squeaky notes, Doctor Grinnell says, although faint and diffi¬ 
cult to locate, have a quality all their own (1908, p. 73). 
