GENERIC CHARACTER.
Bill subulate or awl-shaped; filiform, tubular at the tip and longer than the head; upper mandible forming a sheath for the lower. Tongue filiform, the two threads coalescing, and tubular feet formed for walking; tail composed of ten feathers, in general.
* Bill incurvate.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER
AND
SYNONYMS.
Red; middle tail feathers very long; body red; head brown; throat golden green; rump green.
Trochilus Pella: ruber rectricibus intermediis longissimis, capite fusca, gula aurata uropygioque viridi.—Linn. Syst. 1. p. 189. 2. Gmel. t. 1. p. 1. 485. 2.
Trochilus Pella: curvirostris ruber, rectricibus intermediis longissimis, corpore rubro, capite fusco, gula aurata uropygioque viridi. Lath. Orn. 1. p. 302. 2.
Polytmus Surinamensis longicaudus ruber.—Briss. 3. p. 690. 15.
Falcinellus gutture viridi.—Klein, Av. p. 108. 15.
Le Colibri topaze.—Buff. 6. p. 46.—Pl. Ent. 599.
Topaz Humming-Bird.—Lath Syn. 2. p. 746. 2.
There is not, throughout the very ample range of the creation which the feathered tribes present to our consideration, a race of beings more deservedly admired for their beauty than the Humming-Birds. Natives of the warmer climates of the globe: of countries where the fervour of a tropic sun calls forth the spontaneous productions of the earth bedecked in gaiety unexampled in other regions of the earth, these little beings seem to participate in all its genial influence. With forms the most pleasing for symmetry and elegance they combine a brilliancy of colours the most splendid; their golden hues, their sapphirine tints, the lustre of the emerald, the ruby, garnet, amethyst, and topaz, with which their plumage is adorned, is not surpassed in brightness by the valued gems whose hues they borrow, and whose splendours emulate; as though, in this much-favoured race we beheld the richest gems of earth inspired with life, and endowed with powers of activity and will. The flowers whose nectareous juices afford them sustenance, are moreover the liveliest and most luxuriant among those that adorn the surface of the teeming earth:—in a word, the Humming-Birds, poised and fluttering upon the wing, or flitting from flower to flower, in search of food beneath the fervid illumination of a cloudless tropic sun, present a spectacle of the works of nature upon a scale of miniature the most pleasing and most brilliant.
Owing to the slender structure of the bill, the Humming-Birds have some difficulty in obtaining their support; the luxuriant fruits of the tropic world afford them no repast: their bills are much too feeble to penetrate their rind to derive subsistence from their fluids. It is the rich juices of the flowers and not the fruits that afford them food; the fluids which they find secreted in the nectaria of flowers, the nectaria of those plants in particular which have the flowers long and tubular, and in which those repositories of mellifluous fluid lie in the bottom of the corolla are the favourite objects of their resort. About the flowers of this kind the Humming-Birds are seen hovering like bees, and like those industrious creatures extracting at the same time those juices of the flowers by means of their elongated tongue. The construction of the tongue in this tribe of birds is singular and deserving of explicit mention; it consists of two tubular filiform threads, which coalesce throughout their whole length, excepting at the tips, where they are divided, or bifid; this organ, which is remarkable for its extreme length, it inserts deeply down into the corolla of the flowers, and is thus enabled to obtain the nectar nearly in the same manner as the insects of the sphinx genus. The Humming-Birds, when on the wing, are observed to emit a humming noise, like that of the bee, and it is apparently from this circumstance that this class of the feathered race have derived the appellation of Humming-Birds.
As the different species of the Humming-Bird, though uniformly small, vary much in magnitude, from the bigness indeed of the wren and others of our smaller warblers to a size more diminutive than several of the larger kinds of the bee tribe, the nests of these birds, as may be conceived, are found to vary materially according to the size of the species to which they appertain. These little local habitations of the infant brood are all comparatively small, are usually of a roundish form, lined with the softest downy leaves, and each in general contains two little eggs, scarcely exceeding the size of peas, and of a pure white colour without any spots.
The slenderness of the bill and weakness of the legs in this tribe of birds sufficiently demonstrate that they are inadequate to any contests with other kinds of the feathered race; they are nevertheless observed among themselves to be rather of a pugnaceous disposition. Their usual contests are for their mates or for the possession of some favourite flower, and are observed to take place while on the wing. Their mode of attack is by striking with violence against each other, for they never attempt to assault each other with their bill and their feet are much too small and feeble for conflict.
The species of Humming-Bird now before us is one of the larger kinds, its length being about six inches from the tip of the bill to the extremity of the tail, exclusive of the two elongated feathers which extend beyond the true tail about two inches; the bill is long, slender, and slightly incurvated, and of a whitish colour with the tip black. The most characteristic peculiarity is the large space of topazine or golden green immediately beneath the chin, and which expands over the whole surface of the throat. The head is blackish purple, and the same colour descending along the sides of the neck passes in a kind of crescent round the breast, thus constituting an abrupt separation between the vivid green space of the chin and throat, and the vivid lustre of the abdomen, which is a fine crimson or ruby colour from the breast nearly to the vent, where it becomes interspersed with a few white feathers; the feathers of the thigh are white also. The back and wing coverts are brown with tints and shades of greenish, and glosses of a golden yellow. The greater quill feathers are fuscous, the tail coverts are fine green; the tail orange, except the two remarkable elongated candal feathers, which are black. The legs pale.
Notwithstanding the very decisive character which this species of Humming-Bird displays, and which considered individually can leave us little reason to distrust its identity as a species, we are not to overlook the very near approximation of this kind with some others that are described as specifically different, such as the Sapphire Humming-Bird, and that distinguished by the appellation of the Sapphire and Emerald Humming-Bird. The near approach of these and some others to the species now before us appears to be sufficiently obvious to induce a persuasion that in a less mature state one kind may sometimes have been mistaken for another, and this becomes the more probable when we recollect that the Humming-Birds in general, like many of the larger tribes of the feathered race, do not arrive at their full perfection of plumage till the second and more commonly till the third year.
6
London. Published as the Act directs by E. Donovan & Mess.rs Simpkin & Marshall, May 1, 1822.