XII.
HUMMERS.
California is the land of flowers and hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are there the winged companions of the flowers. In the valleys the airy birds hover about the filmy golden mustard and the sweet-scented primroses; on the blooming hillsides in spring the air is filled with whirring wings and piping voices, as the fairy troops pass and repass at their mad gambols. At one moment the birds are circling methodically around the whorls of the blue sage; at the next, hurtling through the air after a distant companion. The great wild gooseberry bushes with red fuchsia-like flowers are like bee-hives, swarming with noisy hummers. The whizzing and whirring lead one to the bushes from a distance, and on approaching one is met by the brown spindle-like birds, darting out from the blooming shrubs, gleams of green, gold, and scarlet glancing from their gorgets.
The Little Hummer on her Bow-Knot Nest.
(From a photograph.)
The large brown hummers probably stop in the valley only on their way north, but the little black-chinned ones make their home there, and the big spreading sycamores and the great live-oaks are their nesting grounds. In the big oak beside the ranch-house I have seen two or three nests at once; and a ring of live-oaks in front of the house held a complement of nests. From the hammock under the oak beside the house one could watch the birds at their work. If the front door was left open, the hummers would sometimes fly inside; and as we stepped out they often darted away from the flowers growing under the windows.
California is the place of all places to study hummingbirds. The only drawback is that there are always too many other birds to watch at the same time; but one sees enough to want to see more. I never saw a hummingbird courtship unless—perhaps one performance I saw was part of the wooing. I was sitting on Mountain Billy under the little lover's sycamore when a buzzing and a whirring sounded overhead. On a twig sat a wee green lady and before her was her lover (?), who, with the sound and regularity of a spindle in a machine, swung shuttling from side to side in an arc less than a yard long. He never turned around, or took his eyes off his lady's, but threw himself back at the end of his line by a quick spread of his tail. She sat with her eyes fixed upon him, and as he moved from side to side her long bill followed him in a very droll way. When through with his dance he looked at her intently, as if to see what effect his performance had had upon her. She made some remark, apparently not to his liking, for when he had answered he flew away. She called after him, but as he did not return she stretched herself and flew up on a twig above with an amusing air of relief.
This is all I have ever seen of the courtship; but when it comes to nest-building, I have often been an eye-witness to that. One little acquaintance made a nest of yellow down and put it among the green oak leaves, making me think that the laws of protective coloration had no weight with her, but before the eggs were laid she had neatly covered the yellow with flakes of green lichen. I found her one day sitting in the sun with the top of her head as white as though she had been diving into the flour barrel. Here was one of the wonderful cases of 'mutual help' in nature. The flowers supply insects and honey to the hummingbirds, and they, in turn, as they fly from blossom to blossom probing the tubes with the long slender bills that have gradually come to fit the shape of the tubes, brush off the pollen of one blossom to carry it on to the next, so enabling the plants to perfect their flowers as they could not without help. It is said that, in proportion to their numbers, hummingbirds assist as much as insects in the work of cross-fertilization.