. Our birds in their haunts : a popular treatise on the birds of eastern North America . erance ofdark-green leaves—a Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Tra-chilus colubris) shoots around the house and hums in frontof the clusters of blossoms. There are many birds, theflight of Which is so rapid that the strokes of their wingscannot be counted, but here is a species with such nerveof wing that its wing-strokes cannot be seen. A hazysemicircle of indistinctness on each side of the bird is allthat is perceptible. Poised in the air, his body nearlyat the perpendicular, he seems to hang in front of the fl
. Our birds in their haunts : a popular treatise on the birds of eastern North America . erance ofdark-green leaves—a Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Tra-chilus colubris) shoots around the house and hums in frontof the clusters of blossoms. There are many birds, theflight of Which is so rapid that the strokes of their wingscannot be counted, but here is a species with such nerveof wing that its wing-strokes cannot be seen. A hazysemicircle of indistinctness on each side of the bird is allthat is perceptible. Poised in the air, his body nearlyat the perpendicular, he seems to hang in front of the flow-ers, which he probes so hurriedly, one after the other, withhis long slender bill. That long, tubular, fork-shaped tonguemay be sucking up the nectar from those rather small cylin-drical blossoms, or it may be capturing tiny insects housedaway there. Much more like a large sphinx moth, hover- 364 THE HUMMINGBIRD. ing and humming over the flowers in the dusky twilight,than like a bird, appears this delicate fairy-like the bright green of the body gleams and glistens in. THE HUMMINGBIRD. the sunlight; while the ruby-colored throat, changing withthe angle of light as the bird moves, is like a bit of blackvelvet above the white under parts, or it glows and shimmerslike a flame. Each imperceptible stroke of those tin)- wingsconforms to the mechanical laws of flight, in all theirsubtle complications, with an ease and gracefulness that seemsspiritual. Who can fail to note that fine adjustment of theorgans of flight to aerial elasticity and gravitation, by whichthat astonishing bit of nervous energy can rise and fallalmost on the perpendicular, dart from side to side, as if bymagic, or, assuming the horizontal position, pass out ofsight like a shooting star ? Is it not impossible to con-ceive of all this being done by that rational calculation THE HUMMINGBIRD. 365 which enables the rower to row, or the sailor to sail hisboat ? The Hummingbird has alighted on a twig of t
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1892
