370 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
Nest. One in National Museum was saddled on the fork of a slender, drooping 
twig, loosely made of rather coarse materials for a hummingbird—shreds of bark and 
plant fibers, mixed with down, and decorated with narrow strips of bark, fine plant 
stems, and bits of lichen, coated with spider webs. One found by F. C. Willard in 
the Huaehuca Mountains of Arizona at 5,400 feet, and others by O. W. Howard in 
the Catalinas at 6,000 feet in bushes over or near water, “ragged looking/* with cob¬ 
web-hung bits of bark and leaves dangling from them; made of down from oak, 
sycamore or other leaves, and lined with fine rootlets (MS). Eggs: 2. 
General Habits. —The Broad-bill from Mexico, found in southern 
Arizona by Mr. Stephens, was always near water, usually in high moun¬ 
tain canyons, where it perched on dead twigs of sycamores. 
Between the Rincon and Santa Catalina Mountains, Mr. A. B. 
Howell states, on March 13, 1916, “the Broad-bills began to arrive, and 
after that two or three were almost always to be seen in a small shel¬ 
tered patch of mesquite near the mouth of one of the canyons. They 
favor the top twig of a tree and are rather conspicuous . . . but quite 
s hy-” Their long tails, Mr. Howell finds, “are especially noticeable 
whether they are at rest or on the wing, and while in flight give them 
a decidedly ‘bottom-heavy* appearance” (1916, p. 212). 
The color of the bill astonished me on my first meeting with them in 
the Santa Rita Mountains of Arizona. As I noted, the “wide bill was 
livid Turkey-Vulture carmine , the under mandible especially so, the 
upper mandible being blackish at tip.” When watching a female build- 
ing, Mr. Francis C. Willard found that, “when sitting only about 
three feet from the nest, the red bill was the one field mark by which the 
bird could be told” (MS). The ocotilla slopes on the foothills of the 
Santa Rita Mountains, as we found, afforded choice feeding grounds for 
the Broad-bills, who appropriately probed the red, stamen-fringed 
flower tubes with these carmine bills (1923a, p. 407). In dried museum 
skins these colors fade beyond recognition and so are not mentioned in 
some of the books. The meeting with the live birds was a striking 
lesson on the importance of careful field notes on all colors that fade— 
bills, feet, and all the soft parts. 
The courtship “pendulum swing back and forth in front of a female,” 
when given by the Broad-bill, Mr. Willard says is “higher pitched than 
that of any of the other small hummers,” having “the 'zing’ of a rifle 
bullet” (MS). It is of peculiar interest to hear from Mr. O. W. Howard 
that while in Arizona he saw several of the male Broad-bills in the 
vicinity of their completed nests. 
ARIZONA BLUE-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD: Lampornis clemenciae 
bessophilus (Oberholser) 
t q ^o C u^ l o^ L ^ gih: About4 - 5 ' 5 * 4 inches > win S 2.9-3.2 (extent 7.5 Coues), tail 
r i7i Y ,’? 1; . Iong » Wlth broad feathers, slightly emarginate in adult male, 
slightly double-rounded (with outside feathers shorter than middle pair) in adult 
temale; tarsus mainly feathered. Adult male: Uppcrparts dull metallic bronzy green . 
