The Humming birds, with their varied beauties, constitute the most
remarkable feature of the bird-life of America. They have absolutely no
representatives in any other part of the world, the Swifts being the
nearest relatives they have in other countries. Mr. Forbes says that
they abound most in mountainous countries, where the surface and
productions of the soil are most diversified within small areas. They
frequent both open and rare and inaccessible places, and are often found
on the snowy peaks of Chimborazo as high as 16,000 feet, and in the very
lowest valleys in the primeval forests of Brazil, the vast palm-covered
districts of the deltas of the Amazon and Orinoco, the fertile flats and
savannahs of Demarara, the luxurious and beautiful region of Xalapa,
(the realm of perpetual sunshine), and other parts of Mexico. Many of
the highest cones of extinct and existing volcanoes have also furnished
great numbers of rare species.
These birds are found as small as a bumble bee and as large as a
Sparrow. The smallest is from Jamaica, the largest from Patagonia.
Allen's Hummer is found on the Pacific coast, north to British Columbia,
east to southern Arizona.
Mr. Langille, in "Our Birds in their Haunts," beautifully describes
their flights and manner of feeding. He says "There are many birds the
flight of which is so rapid that the strokes of their wings cannot be
counted, but here is a species with such nerve of wing that its wing
strokes cannot be seen. 'A hazy semi-circle of indistinctness on each
side of the bird is all that is perceptible.' Poised in the air, his
body nearly perpendicular, he seems to hang in front of the flowers
which he probes so hurriedly, one after the other, with his long,
slender bill. That long, tubular, fork-shaped tongue may be sucking up
the nectar from those rather small cylindrical blossoms, or it may be
capturing tiny insects housed away there. Much more like a large sphynx
moth hovering and humming over the flowers in the dusky twilight, than
like a bird, appears this delicate, fairy-like beauty. How the bright
green of the body gleams and glistens in the sunlight. Each
imperceptible stroke of those tiny wings conforms to the mechanical
laws of flight in all their subtle complications with an ease and
gracefulness that seems spiritual. Who can fail to note that fine
adjustment of the organs of flight to aerial elasticity and gravitation,
by which that astonishing bit of nervous energy can rise and fall almost
on the perpendicular, dart from side to side, as if by magic, or,
assuming the horizontal position, pass out of sight like a shooting
star? Is it not impossible to conceive of all this being done by that
rational calculation which enables the rower to row, or the sailor to
sail his boat?"
"What heavenly tints in mingling radiance fly,
Each rapid movement gives a different dye;
Like scales of burnished gold they dazzling show,
Now sink to shade, now like a furnace glow."
[Illustration: From col. F. M. Woodruff.
ALLENS HUMMING BIRD.
Copyrighted by
Nature Study Pub. Co., 1897, Chicago.]