One day in June, being up this road, I found two nests attached to twigs of bamboo, and one just commenced. Two parallel twigs were connected together by spiders’ webs, profusely but irregularly stretched across, and these held a layer of silk-cotton, which just filled up the space (about an inch square) between them. This was the base. The others were complete cups of silk-cotton exceedingly compact and neat, ornamented outside with bits of grey lichen, stuck about. Usually the nest is placed on a joint of a bamboo branch, and the diverging twigs are embraced by the base. The nest is about the size of half a walnut-shell, if divided not lengthwise, but transversely. To see the bird sitting in this tiny structure is amusing. The head and tail are both excluded, the latter erect like a wren’s: and the bright eyes glance in every direction. One of these contained two eggs, the other a single young nearly fledged, which, with the nest, I carried to Content to rear.

It is interesting to observe the cleanliness of animals; the dung of young birds would greatly inconvenience them in the nest, and probably cause disease; it is therefore wisely ordained that there should be some mode of getting rid of it. Swallows carry out the excrement of their young in their beaks; and this they are able to do, as at that early season it is enclosed in a tenacious jelly. I observed with admiration, and with adoration, of the tender mercy of God in directing such minutiæ as these, for the comfort of His creatures, that this little Humming-bird, while I was carrying it, elevating its body above the edge of the nest, in the bottom of which it ordinarily lay, ejected the alvine discharge in a forcible jet, to the distance of several feet.

This little nestling I attempted to rear, and had every prospect of succeeding, for it eagerly received the juice of sugar-cane, which I administered to it in a small quill, many times in the day, sometimes adding small insects, as in a former case. But on the third day I was necessitated to return to Bluefields, and rode fifteen miles with the bird in my hand, enclosed in an open box. I took every care of it; but whether from too long fasting, or from the shaking, or exposure to the sun, I know not, but it was dying when I arrived, and a few minutes put an end to its sufferings and my expectations.

Several times I have enclosed a nest of eggs in a gauzed cage, with the dam, taken in the act of sitting; but in no case did she survive twenty-four hours’ confinement, or take the slightest notice of her nest. When engaged in the attempt to domesticate a colony of Polytmus, an opportunity offered to add this minute species to my aviary. For at that time two large tamarind-trees very near the house were in full blossom, and round them the Vervain Humming-bird was swarming. I never saw so many of this tribe at once; they flocked together, as Sam truly observed, “like bees,” and the air resounded with their humming, as if in the neighbourhood of a hive. We caught several with the net, but could make nothing of them; they were indomitably timid. When turned into the room, they shot away into the loftiest angle of the ceiling, and there hovered motionless, or sometimes slowly turning as if on a pivot, their wings all the time vibrating with such extraordinary velocity as to be visible only as a semicircular film on each side. The fact that the extent of the vibration reached 180°, (or so nearly that it seemed to me such,) shews the immense power of the small muscles by which the wings are put in motion. Neither of our other species approaches either the rapidity or extent of this oscillation; and hence with this bird alone does the sound produced by the vibration of the wings acquire the sharpness of an insect’s hum. The noise produced by the hovering of Polytmus is a whirring exactly like that of a wheel put into rapid revolution by machinery; that of Humilis is a hum, like that of a large bee.

The spirit of curiosity is manifested by this little bird as well as by the larger species. When struck at, it will return in a moment, and peep into the net, or hover just in front of one’s face. The stories told of Humming-birds attacking men, and striking at the eyes with their needle-like bills, originated, I have no doubt, in the exaggeration of fear, misinterpreting this innocent curiosity.

Fam.—CERTHIADÆ.—(The Creepers.)

BLACK AND WHITE CREEPER.[27]

Mniotilta varia.

Motacilla varia,Linn.
Sylvia varia,Lath.
Certhia maculata,Wils.
Mniotilta varia,Vieill.
Certhia varia,Aud. pl. 90.