Length -- 5 to 6 inches. A little shorter than the English
sparrow, but apparently much larger because of its wide wing
spread.
Male -- Lustrous dark steel-green above; darker and shading into
black on wings and tail, which is forked. Under parts soft
white.
Female -- Duller than male.
Range -- North America, from Hudson Bay to Panama.
Migrations -- End of March. September or later. Summer resident.
"The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times: and the
turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their
coming." -- Jeremiah, viii. 7.
The earliest of the family to appear in the spring, the tree swallow comes
skimming over the freshly ploughed fields with a wide sweep of the wings, in
what appears to be a perfect ecstasy of flight. More shy of the haunts of man,
and less gregarious than its cousins, it is usually to be seen during
migration flying low over the marshes, ponds, and streams with a few chosen
friends, keeping up an incessant warbling twitter while performing their
bewildering and tireless evolutions as they catch their food on the wing.
Their white breasts flash in the sunlight, and it is only when they dart near
you, and skim close along the surface of the water, that you discover their
backs to be not black, but rich, dark green, glossy to iridescence.
It is probable that these birds keep near the waterways because their favorite
insects and wax-berries are more plentiful in such places: but this
peculiarity has led many people to the absurd belief that the tree swallow
buries itself under the mud of ponds in winter in a state of hibernation. No
bird's breathing apparatus is made to operate under mud.
In unsettled districts these swallows nest in hollow trees, hence their name;
but with that laziness that forms a part of the degeneracy of civilization,
they now gladly accept the boxes about men's homes set up for the martins.
Thousands of these beautiful birds have been shot on the Long Island marshes
and sold to New York epicures for snipe.
RUBY-THROATED HUMMING-BIRD (Trochilus colubris) Humming-bird
Family
[Called also RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD, AOU 1998]
Length -- 3.5 to 3.75 inches. A trifle over half as long as the
English sparrow. The smallest bird we have.
Male -- Bright metallic green above; wings and tail darkest, with
ruddy-purplish reflections and dusky-white tips on outer
tail quills. Throat and breast brilliant metallic -- red in one
light, orange flame in another, and dusky orange in another,
according as the light strikes the plumage. Sides greenish;
underneath lightest gray, with whitish border outlining the
brilliant breast. Bill long and needle-like.
Female -- Without the brilliant feathers on throat; darker gray
beneath. Outer tail-quills are banded with black and tipped
with white.
Range -- Eastern North America, from northern Canada to the Gulf
Of Mexico in summer. Winters in Central America.
Migrations -- May. October. Common summer resident.
This smallest, most exquisite and unabashed of our bird neighbors cannot be
mistaken, for it is the only one of its kin found east of the plains and north
of Florida, although about four hundred species, native only to the New World,
have been named by scientists. How does it happen that this little tropical
jewel alone flashes about our Northern gardens? Does it never stir the spirit
of adventure and emulation in the glistening breasts of its stay-at-home
cousins in the tropics by tales of luxuriant tangles of honeysuckle and
clematis on our cottage porches; of deep-cupped trumpet-flowers climbing over
the walls of old-fashioned gardens, where larkspur, narcissus, roses, and
phlox, that crowd the box-edged beds, are more gay and honey-laden than their
little brains can picture? Apparently it takes only the wish to be in a place
to transport one of these little fairies either from the honeysuckle trellis
to the canna bed or from Yucatan to the Hudson. It is easy to see how to will
and to fly are allied in the minds of the humming-birds, as they are in the
Latin tongue. One minute poised in midair, apparently motionless before a
flower while draining the nectar from its deep cup -- though the humming of
its wings tells that it is suspended there by no magic -- the next instant it
has flashed out of sight as if a fairy's wand had made it suddenly invisible.
Without seeing the hummer, it might be, and often is, mistaken for a bee
improving the "shining hour."
At evening one often hears of a "humming-bird" going the rounds of the garden,
but at this hour it is usually the sphinx-moth hovering above the flower-beds
-- the one other creature besides the bee for which the bird is ever mistaken.
The postures and preferences of this beautiful large moth make the mistake a
very natural one.
The ruby-throat is strangely fearless and unabashed. It will dart among the
vines on the veranda while the entire household are assembled there, and add
its hum to that of the conversation in a most delightfully neighborly way.
Once a glistening little sprite, quite undaunted by the size of an audience
that sat almost breathless enjoying his beauty, thrust his bill into one calyx
after another on a long sprig of honeysuckle held in the hand.
And yet, with all its friendliness -- or is it simply fearlessness? -- the
bird is a desperate duellist, and will lunge his deadly blade into the
jewelled breast of an enemy at the slightest provocation and quicker than
thought. All the heat of his glowing throat seems to be transferred to his
head while the fight continues, sometimes even to the death -- a cruel, but
marvellously beautiful sight as the glistening birds dart and tumble about
beyond the range of peace-makers.
High up in a tree, preferably one whose knots and lichen-covered excrescences
are calculated to help conceal the nest that so cleverly imitates them, the
mother humming-bird saddles her exquisite cradle to a horizontal limb. She
lines it with plant down, fluffy bits from cat-tails, and the fronds of fern,
felting the material into a circle that an elm-leaf amply roofs over. Outside,
lichens or bits of bark blend the nest so harmoniously with its surroundings
that one may look long and thoroughly before discovering it. Two
infinitesimal, white eggs tax the nest accommodation to its utmost.
In the mating season the female may be seen perching -- a posture one rarely
catches her gay lover in -- preening her dainty but sombre feathers with
ladylike nicety. The young birds do a great deal of perching before they gain
the marvellously rapid wing-motions of maturity, but they are ready to fly
within three weeks after they are hatched. By the time the trumpet-vine is in
bloom they dart and sip and utter a shrill little squeak among the flowers, in
company with the old birds.
During the nest-building and incubation the male bird keeps so aggressively on
the defensive that he often betrays to a hitherto unsuspecting intruder the
location of his home. After the young birds have to be fed he is most diligent
in collecting food, that consists not alone of the sweet juices of flowers, as
is popularly supposed, but also of aphides and plant-lice that his
proboscis-like tongue licks off the garden foliage literally like a streak of
lightning.
Both parents feed the young by regurgitation -- a process disgusting to the
human observer, whose stomach involuntarily revolts at the sight so welcome to
the tiny, squeaking, hungry birds.