The most curious is a bird, which is the smallest, and at the same time
the most beautiful of all the winged tribe. The Spaniards have with
justice named it picaflor, for it plucks the flowers out of which it
sucks juice like a bee. It charms the eye with the exquisite beauty of
its colour and plumage. The whole of its little body is scarce bigger
than an olive or a nutmeg. Its bill is very long, but slenderer than a
needle, its eyes extremely lively, and its tongue broad, but thinner
than a silken thread. It sometimes utters a shrill whistle which can
hardly be heard. In the country, in a chapel that had long been
deserted, I found the nest of one of these birds; scarce bigger than a
common walnut, it hung suspended by a horse-hair from two corners of the
wall, and in it the mother was then sitting upon two little eggs. Its
feathers are sometimes of a bright green, sometimes (for there are nine
different species of them in Paraguay) of a blue, sometimes of a fiery
red colour; but all seem clothed with most refulgent gold. That
brilliant hue which shines in the expanded tail of a peacock, or in a
drake's neck, is dull in comparison with the golden resplendence of this
little bird. In sucking juice from flowers it does not stand upon its
feet, but seems to hang in the air, and is always borne swiftly along,
with its feathers suspended and tremulous. Some have caught birds of
this kind and brought them home, but though carefully fed upon melted
sugar, they never lived more than four days, being always used to the
nectar of flowers. With their feathers, which nature has painted with
the most exquisite colours, and tinged with gold, the Peruvian Indians
are said to have adorned such elegant little images, that you would have
sworn them to be formed by the pencil of an artist, and gilded.