magic carbuncle of glowing fire, stretching out its gorgeous ruff, as if to emulate the sun itself in splendour.
Towards the close of May the females were sitting, at which time the males were uncommonly quarrelsome
and vigilant, darting out at me as X approached the tree, probably near the nest, looking like an angry coal
of brilliant fire, passing within very little of my face, returning several times to the qttack, sinking and
darting with the utmost velocity, at the same time uttering a curious reverberating sharp bleat, somewhat
similar to the quivering twang of a dead twig, yet also so much like the real bleat of some small quadruped,
that for some time I searched the ground instead of the air, for the actor in the scene. At other times
the males were seeu darting op high in the air, and whirling about each other in great anger and with much
velocity. After these manoeuvres the aggressor returned to the same dead twig, where for days he regularly
took his station, displaying the utmost courage and angry vigilance. The angry hissing or bleating note
seems something like take 1 1 1 f sk me, tremulously uttered as it whirls aud sweeps through the air, like
a musket-ball, accompanied also by something like the whirr of the Night Hawk. On the 29th of May I
found a nest in a forked branch of the Nootka Bramble, Ruins mtkanrn. The female was sitting on two
eggs of the same shape and colour as those of the common species, T. colukris. The next also was perfectly
similar, but somewhat deeper. As I approached, the female came hovering round the nest, and soon after,
when all was still, she resumed her place contentedly.”
Dr. Townsend’s note is as follows:—“ Nootka Sound Humming-Bird, Trochilus rufus, Ak-puels-Rimie, of
the Chinnooks. On a clear day the male may be seen to rise to a great height in the air, and descend
instantly near the earth, then mount again to the same altitude as at first, performing in the evolution the
half of a large circle. During the descent it emits a strange and astonishingly loud note, which can be
compared to nothing but the rubbing together of the limbs of trees during a high wind. I heard this
singular note repeatedly last spring and summer, but did not then discover to what it belonged. I did not
suppose it to be a bird at all, and least of all a Humming-Bird. The observer thinks it almost impossible
that so small a creature can be capable of producing so much sound. I have never observed this habit
upon a dull or cloudy day.”
“ The nest,” says Audubon, “ which measures two inches and a quarter in height,* and an inch and three-
quarters in breadth at the upper part, is composed externally of mosses, lichens, and a few feathers, with
slender fibrous roots interwoven, and lined with fine cottony seed-down.”
By many writers the Little Brown Humming-Bird of Edwards (Trochilus ruber of Linnaeus) has been
considered identical with the present bird, but I am at a loss to conceive how such an error could have
arisen, since on examining Edwards’ figure it will at once be seen that it represents a bird of a totally
different form, probably a Phaethornis, but what species it is almost impossible to determine.
The adult male has the head brown; all the upper surface and the tail, the feathers of which are of a
broad lanceolate form, cinnamon-brown, with a mark of dark brown down the tip of each of the tail-
feathers ; wings purple brown; wing-coverts bronzy brown; throat luminous orange-red; breast white,
tinged with red; uuder surface cinnamon-brown, inclining to white on the centre of the abdomen; bill
brownish black; feet brown.
The above is the usual colouring, but I have occasionally seen fully adult males with the rich gorget, in
which the colouring of the back was totally different, being of a golden green, and presenting so great a
contrast as almost to induce a belief that they were of a different species.
The female has the upper surface golden green, the head brownish; the upper tail-coverts and the base
of the tail-feathers rufous, the remaining portion of the tail-feathers being brownish black tipped with
white; under surface white, tinged with rufous on the sides and under tail-coverts, the throat having a
roundish spot of fiery metallic red near the tip of most of the feathers; the female also differs in having
the tail-feathers short and rounded at the tip instead of the broad and lanceolate form of those of the male.
The Plate represents three males and a female on the Gynoxys fra g runs; all of the natural size.