Birds and Nature, Vol 10 No. 2 [September 1901]

Various

Various

Birds and Nature, Vol 10 No. 2 [September 1901]

TO A HUMMINGBIRD

Voyager on golden air,

Type of all that’s fleet and fair,

Incarnate gem,

Live diadem

Bird-beam of the summer day, —

Whither on your sunny way?

Loveliest of all lovely things,

Roses open to your wings;

Each gentle breast

Would give you rest;

Stay, forget lost Paradise,

Star-bird fallen from happy skies.

Vanished! Earth is not his home;

Onward, onward must he roam

Swift passion-thought,

In rapture wrought,

Issue of the soul’s desire,

Plumed with beauty and with fire.

    – John Vance Cheney.

THE ANNA’S HUMMINGBIRD

(Calypte anna.)

Buffon, writing of the Hummingbird, and his words do not refer to any single species, but to them as a group, says that “the emerald, the ruby and the topaz glitter in its garb, which is never soiled with the dust of earth, for, leading an aerial life, it rarely touches the turf, even for an instant. Always in the air, flying from flower to flower, it shares their freshness and their splendor, lives on their nectar, and only inhabits those climates in which they are unceasingly renewed.”

Of all the birds that might receive the appellation, “The Bird of America,” to none could it be applied more truthfully than to the Hummingbird. For of all the families of birds that are distinctively peculiar to the Americas the Trochilidæ, or the Hummingbird family, contains the larger number of species. There are over five hundred species inhabiting North and South America and the adjacent islands, from Patagonia on the South to Alaska on the North. The species is more numerous in the tropics and but seventeen are known to frequent the United States. Of these only one, the ruby-throated hummingbird, exhibits its beauty east of the Mississippi River, and but seven species have their breeding range chiefly or entirely within the United States.

“They abound most in mountainous countries, where the configuration of the surface and productions of the soil are most diversified within small areas. Their center of abundance is among the Northern Andes, between the parallels of ten degrees north and south of the equator, from which region they gradually diminish in numbers both to the northward and southward, but much more rapidly toward the extensive lowlands of the eastern portion of the continent.”

A very interesting group, not so gem-like as many of their sister species, is the hermit hummers represented by a number of species that chiefly inhabit Brazil. These hummingbirds are notable for their plain colors, their plumage having but little of the lustrous metallic iridescence which is so marked a characteristic of the species with which we are more familiar and which frequent flowers in the bright sunshine. The laws of Nature seem to provide against excess even in coloration. The hermit hummers obtain their food only from the insect world, feeding upon those species found on the leaves of trees in deep forests. In such a home a gorgeous dress would be out of place and needless.

Regarding their actions, Mr. Robert Ridgway says: “Hummingbirds are so distinct from other birds in their external structures and manner of flight that they present in every respect, except when at rest, an appearance entirely peculiar to themselves. They spend perhaps the greater part of their time upon the wing, usually hovering or balancing themselves before a flower from which they are procuring their sustenance of honey or of minute insects. At such time the body is nearly vertical or inclined at a slight angle, the head bent nearly at right angles with the axis of the body, the wings spread nearly at right angles with the same axis.” The motion of the wings, which is always rapid, may carry the bird in a horizontal direction or poise it in its vertical attitude directly over a flower. In this latter position the motion of the wings is so rapid that a mere haze ap