Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1885 — The Hamming Bird at Heme. [ARTICLE]

The Hamming Bird at Heme.

Cozily sitting in the very tiniest little nest, so soft and elastic that even her delicate plumage is unruffled by contact with its moss-covered sides, we find our humming bird. High on the gnarled and twisted branch of a dogwood she has built this fairy home, and therein, with the overhanging leaves for a canopy, the little sylph is brooding. How shall I describe the cunning little structure? Soft puffs from the blossoms of oak and chestnut, pits of the softest brown fungus and scraps of gray mosses, that grow in secret places known only to these little fairies, were worked into the walls, and gradually the little cup-like house approached completion. Little flakes of lichen and bark, veritable diminutive clapboards, were next added, and the task was finished. There it rests, its mossy covering harmonizing so well with the tree bark as to conceal it from all but the closest observer, and often, though knowing its location so well, I have missed it for an instant, so cunningly is it placed. A dead twig projects from the branch a few inches to one side, and here the little wood sprites frequently perch. There is the male now, his ruby throat all ablaze as a sunbeam covers him for an instant with gold. See him edge up to his little darling! And now as he snuggles close beside her he is evidently telling her where her breakfast is waiting in the trumpet flower he tapped for her last nignt, and which is half filled with nectar this morning, accumulated drop by drop during the cool hours of darkness,. Like a flash she is off, and he takes her place, to keep the chill from the tiny eggs. These frail little creatures have gradually become accustomed to my presence. At first they were nervous, and would cease work, while one or the other would dart down to within five or six feet of me, and there, poised on its whirring wings, closely inspect the intruder, uttering the while sundry peeps and curious little cries. Now that they are convinced that no harm is intended they do not even leave the nest at my approach. What a dream life is theirs! Gliding in zigzag lines over the flower beds, now suspended almost motionless over a lily bloom, now racing with the bumble-bees for a honeyed prize, or dashing at the sparrows or robbins, and speedily putting them to flight with the fury of their onset. What they do or where they go when it storms I do ndffknow; but at the first returning gleam of sunshine they are back again, ..with the rapidity of thought, sipping the rain drops from the flowers. And when bedtime comes what wonderful stories of the sunlight the little things must tell each other, as cuddling close up there in the dark they listen to the croon! croon! croon! of the insects, and watch the fireflies guiding the moths among the trees by the light of their torches. —Forest and Stream.