“The rare little bird of the bower,
Bird of the musical wing,”
being coincident with that of the New World, the ancients were denied
the exhilarating shock of delight that has been vouchsafed to their
descendants when that
“——Quick feathered spangled shot,
Rapid as thought from spot to spot,
Showing the fairy humming-bird,”
and their writings lack the glamour of his “glossy, varying dyes;” for,
according to Lesson, the first mention which is made of hummingbirds in
the narratives of adventurers who proceeded to America, not with the
design of studying its natural productions, but for the discovery of
gold, dates from 1558.
Of the name hummingbird or hum-bird, Professor Newton says its earliest
use, as yet discovered, is said to be by Thomas Morton in The New
England Canaan, printed in 1632, while in 1646 Sir Thomas Browne wrote:
“So have all Ages conceaved, and most are still ready to sweare, the
Wren is the least of Birds, yet the discoveries of America, and even of
our own Plantations, shewed us one farre lesse, that is the Hum-bird,
not much exceeding a Beetle.” Mr. Ridgway cites the case of Mr. Benjamin
Buttivant, writing from Boston in 1697, who told of a hum-bird that he
fed with honey, that was “A Prospect to many Comers.”
“The earliest notice of the common Ruby-throat that I have been able to
find,” Mr. Ridgway continues, “is an extract from a letter written from
Boston in New England, October 26, 1670, by John Winthrop, Esq.,
governor of Connecticut, to Francis Willoughby, Esq., and published in
the philosophical Transactions.” This letter reads as follows:
“I send you withal, a little Box, with a Curiosity in it, which perhaps
will be counted a trifle, yet ’tis rarely to be met with, even here. It
is the curiously contrived nest of the Humming-Bird, so called from the
humming noise it maketh as it flies. ’Tis an exceeding little Bird, and
only seen in Summer, and mostly in gardens, flying from flower, sucking
Honey out of the flowers as the Bee doth; as it flieth not lighting on
the flower, but hovering over it, sucking with its long Bill a sweet
substance. There are in the same Nest two of that Bird’s eggs. Whether
they used to have more at once I know not. I never saw but one of these
Nests before, and that was sent over formerly with some other Rarities,
but the vessel miscarrying, you received them not.”
Of the long bill with which it sucketh the sweet substance, the tongue
is the essential feature, so far as sustenance is concerned; consisting
of a long double cylinder, “like a double-barreled gun,” Goodrich
thought—a most convenient instrument for imbibing nectar—flattened and
sometimes barbed at the end, for the capture of the minute insects that
constitute the less æsthetic portion of their nutriment—for it has been
many times demonstrated that, airy and fairy as they are (the size of
the stomach not exceeding the globe of the eye, and scarcely a sixth
part as large as the heart, which, in turn, is remarkably large, nearly
the size of the cranium), they cannot live by ambrosia alone, nor yet by
love, but must vary both with an occasional relish of aphides and
infinitesimal spiders.
Of “that Bird’s two eggs,” Mr. Chapman says: “As far as known, all
hummingbirds lay two white eggs—frail, pearly ellipses—that after ten
days’ incubation develop into a tangle of dark limbs and bodies, which
no one could think of calling birds, much less winged gems.”
It has been a matter of doubt to many whether hummingbirds ever rested
at all or spent their lives in the air exclusively, but Mr. Gould states
authoritatively: “Although many short intermissions of rest are taken
during the day, the bird may be said to live in the air—an element in
which it performs every kind of evolution with the utmost ease,
frequently rising perpendicularly, flying backwards, pirouetting or
dancing off, as it were.”
It was the belief of the Duke of Argyle that no bird could fly backward,
a theory that he stated with emphasis in his Reign of Law, but it has
been proved that he reckoned without “the winglet of the fairy
hummingbird,” which seems to be the exception to prove a reigning law of
Nature.
Montgomery makes of the whole Trochilidæ family this inspired
explanation:
“Art thou a bird, a bee, or butterfly?
‘Each and all three;—a bird
A bee collecting sweets from bloom to bloom,
A butterfly in brilliancy of plume.’”
The blooms from which he collects his sweets are of the tubular flowers
almost exclusively, as a mark, possibly, of his appreciation of their
invention for him and at his request, as told by Albert Bigelow Paine:
“The clover, said the humming-bird,
Was fashioned for the bee,
But ne’er a flower, as I have heard,
Was ever made for me.
A passing zephyr paused, and stirred
Some moonlit drops of dew
To earth; and for the humming-bird
The honeysuckle grew.”
Of his manner of hanging before his tubular flowers Goodrich says: “He
poises or suspends himself on wing for the space of two or three seconds
so steadily that his wings become invisible and you can plainly discern
the pupil of his eye, looking round with great quickness and
circumspection. The glossy green of his back and the fire of his throat,
dazzling in the sun, form altogether a most interesting appearance.”
This appearance Alexander Wilson pictures thus:
“While richest roses though in crimson drest,
Spring from the splendors of his gorgeous breast.
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!”
It is little wonder that Buffon exclaimed, “Nature has loaded it with
all the gifts of which she has only given other birds a share!” Yet Mr.
Ridgway considers the Count de Buffon’s laudation as excessive because
the “absence of melodious voice is, as a rule, a conspicuous deficiency
of the tribe”; and in 1693 Mr. Hammersley of Coventry stated, “God, in
many of his creatures, is bountiful, but not lavish, for I did observe
the hummingbirds for several years, and never heard them sing.”
Goldsmith says that all travelers agree that they have a little
interrupted chirrup, but Labat asserts that they have a most pleasing
melancholly melody in their voices, though small and proportioned to the
organs that produce it.
It is known that a few of the more robust species of Jamaica and Mexico
warble a pigmy melody, and Mr. Gosse says that the Vervain hummingbird
of Jamaica is the only one known to him that has a real song, warbling
in a very weak but very sweet tone a continuous melody for ten minutes
at a time.
But the poet Rogers apprehended something more than is perceptible to
the scientific consciousness, for he exclaims in The Voyage of Columbus:
“—There quivering rise
Wings that reflect the glow of evening skies!
Half bird, half fly, the fairy king of flowers
Reigns there, and revels through the fragrant hours;
Gem full of life and joy and _song divine_!”
Could the compressed, intense, vehement little sprite be expanded to the
dimensions of the ordinary folk of air, would the magnified musical and
physical representation be as entrancing as are the fleeting glimpses of
the fairy and the elusive hints of melody that so nearly escape us now?
For this electric spark, like an erratic meteorite of topaz and ruby and
gold,
“As if inlaid
With brilliants from the mine, or made
Of tearless rainbows, such as span
Th’ unclouded skies of Peristan,”
hovering between heaven and earth in a mist created by its own prismatic
wings, might almost be believed an exemplification of light itself as
scientifically defined, “a form of radiant energy,” and it is the
nearest approach to a disembodied spirit that lies within the range of
mortal vision. So while it is believed that its song is but a feeble
twittering, it may yet be as much musician as it is bird, and emit
strains of melody too exquisite and finely drawn for human apprehension,
and of which the notes that reach us are but the deeper tones of a
delicate and etherial ariose.
Juliette A. Owen.