Hummingbirds are found only in America and on the islands near it. They are of many kinds, but only one kind is ever seen in the eastern United States. This is known as the ruby-throated hummingbird, because of a splendid red throat-patch worn by the male. To speak more exactly, the patch is red only in some lights. You see it one instant as black as a coal, and the next instant it flashes like a coal on fire. This ornament,—a real jewel,—with the lovely shining green of the bird’s back, makes him an object of great beauty.
Every one knows him, or would do so only that some people confuse him with bright-colored, long-tongued hummingbird moths that are seen hovering, mostly in the early evening, over the flowers of the garden.
The ruby-throat spends the winter south of the United States. He arrives in Florida in March, but does not reach New England till near the middle of May.
Many persons seem to imagine that the hummer lives on the wing. They have never seen one sitting still, they say. But the truth is that hummingbirds pass but a small part of the time in the air. They are so very small, however, that they are easily overlooked on a branch of a tree, and the average person never notices them except when the hum of their wings attracts his attention.
One of the prettiest sights in the world is a hummingbird hovering before a blossom, his wings vibrating so fast as to make a mist about him, and his long needle of a bill probing the flower with quick, eager thrusts. All his movements are of lightning-like rapidity, and even while your eyes are on him he is gone like a flash, you cannot say whither.
The hummingbird’s nest is built on a branch of a tree,—saddled on it,—and is not very hard to find after you have once seen one, and so have learned precisely what to look for. Generally it is placed well out towards the end of the limb. I have found it on pitch-pines in the woods, on roadside maples,—shade-trees,—and especially in apple and pear orchards. The mother bird is very apt to betray its whereabouts by buzzing about the head of any one who comes near it.
RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD
1, 2. Males. 3. Female. 4. Young
Last May, for example, I stopped in the middle of the road to listen for the voice of a house wren, when I caught instead the buzz and squeak of a hummer. Turning my gaze upward, I saw her fly to a half-built nest on a maple branch directly over my head.
The nest is a tiny thing, looking for size and shape like a cup out of a child’s toy tea-set. Its walls are thick, and on the outside are covered—shingled, we may say—with bits of gray lichen, which help to make the nest look like nothing more than a knot. Whether they are put on for that purpose, or by way of ornament, is more than I can tell.