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Updated: June 4, 2025
Let not the fascination of this valley, the songs of birds, the flowers, the hummingbirds glistening among them like gems, the soft outlines of the scenery detain you long. Harder and sterner scenes await you. The Andes are a picture of life.
I searched well at Caripi, expecting to find the Lophornis Gouldii, which I was told had been obtained in the locality. This is one of the most beautiful of all hummingbirds, having round the neck a frill of long white feathers tipped with golden green. I was not, however, so fortunate as to meet with it. Several times I shot by mistake a hummingbird hawk-moth instead of a bird.
My attention is soon arrested by a pair of hummingbirds, the ruby-throated, disporting themselves in a low bush a few yards from me. The female takes shelter amid the branches, and squeaks exultingly as the male, circling above, dives down as if to dislodge her. Seeing me, he drops like a feather on a slender twig, and in a moment both are gone.
"I used to call those birds Chimney 'Swallows, but Olive says they are made more like Hummingbirds and Nighthawks than real Swallows," continued Rap. "Nighthawks?" said Nat. "I thought Olive said Hawks were cannibal birds. How are they relations of Swallows?"
The lower kind of competition affecting hummingbirds, that with insects and, within the family, of species with species, has probably only served to intensify their unique characteristics, and, perhaps, to lower their intelligence.
Bright feathers constitute a double danger, for not only do they render their possessor conspicuous, but, just as the butterfly chooses the gayest flower, so do hawks deliberately single out from many obscure birds the one with brilliant plumage; but the rapacious kinds do not waste their energies in the vain pursuit of hummingbirds.
It was an impressive sight, rendered double so be the sudden manner in which it was revealed to us by that scene-shifter the Wind. I saw blackbirds at this place, and sparrows, and the solitary sandpiper and the Canada woodpecker, and a large number of hummingbirds. Indeed, I saw more of the latter here than I ever before saw in any one locality. Their squeaking and whirring were almost incessant.
Occasionally a flock of small parroquets, green, with a patch of yellow on the forehead, would come at early morning to the trees near the Estrada. They would feed quietly, sometimes chattering in subdued tones, but setting up a harsh scream, and flying off, on being disturbed. Hummingbirds we did not see at this time, although I afterwards found them by hundreds when certain trees were in flower.
These birds feed their young in the same way Hummingbirds and Flickers do; for they give the little ones softened food from the crop, mixed with a sort of milky fluid that also comes from the crop. One habit that Pigeons and Doves have, all their own, is that in drinking they do not raise the head to swallow like other birds, but keep the beak in the water until they are through.
The same insensibility to danger is seen when humming-birds are captured and confined in a room, and when, before a day is over, they will flutter about their captor's face and even take nectar from his lips. Some observers have thought that hummingbirds come nearest to humble-bees in their actions. I do not think so. Mr.
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