HUMMINGBIRDS: BLUE-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD 371 
rump with feathers tipped with grayish, tail dull bluish black , lateral feathers lipped 
with white, wings dusky, faintly glossed with purplish; side of head with conspicuous , 
white streak back of eye and one from bill (sometimes obsolete); gorget metallic blue 
rest of underparts light brownish gray, breast and sides 
washed with greenish, under tail coverts broadly edged 
with white; iris dark brown, bill dull black, feet dusky. 
Adult female: Similar, but throat like underparts. 
Young male: Similar to adult but with more bronzy 
gray-margined upperparts. 
Range. —Southwestern United States and Mexico* 
Breeds in mountains of southeastern Arizona, south" 
western New Mexico, central-western Texas, and south 
to Chihuahua; winters south to southeastern Mexico 
(Vera Cruz). 
State Records. —The Arizona Blue-throated Hum¬ 
mingbird was added to the fauna of New Mexico by 
Mearns who took specimens July 11 and 12, 1892, at 
Lang Ranch in the San Luis Mountains on the New 
Mexico side of the boundary. He had found the species 
two weeks earlier in the same mountains just south of the line. It ranges over 
much of Mexico and in the San Luis Mountains finds its extreme northeastern 
limit.—W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —The few reported, among ferns in a small shrub, on an old Black Phoebe’s 
nest, or hung in hooks of wire were made of down or oak blossom hulls and stems, 
tied together with cobwebs and cocoon silk. Eggs: 2, white. 
Food.—I nsects from flowers of the shrubby honeysuckle, gilia, agave, and other 
plants. 
General Habits. —The large Blue-throated Hummingbirds, “ dis¬ 
tinguished for the quietness of their coloring’ ’ come into New Mexico in 
the San Luis Mountains, but are better known in the mountains of 
southeastern Arizona. In the Huachucas Mr. F. C. Willard found 
them in narrow, deep canyons, and later, in a small greenhouse in 
Ramsay Canyon. A female nested persistently in the same spot the 
crook of the handle of an old lard pail—on a hook. He took the hook 
with one nest that had at least four stories, and when he replaced it with 
another hook, he says, he/‘had the pleasure of photographing the young 
raised in a nest built on it” (1911, p. 47). In the Chisos Mountains Mr. 
Bailey and Mr. Fuertes found the rare birds very tame, often lighting 
on a bush close by them or buzzing within a few feet of their faces. In a 
wooded gulch watered by a mountain brook where the Couch Jays, 
Stephens Whip-poor-wills, Band-tailed Pigeons, and numbers of noisy 
sociable Mearns Woodpeckers w r ere found, Mr. Fuertes says, occa¬ 
sionally a big Blue-throated Hummer would come skittling up the gulch, 
for all the world like a little swift, uttering bis sharp little squeak every 
two seconds. Perhaps he would alight on the dead lower twigs of a 
drooping pine branch, and jumble his squeaks together into a kind of 
little song; more likely he would zip by like a bullet and disappear up the 
From Smithsonian 
(Robert Ridgway) 
Fig. 65. Blue-throated 
Hummingbird 
