Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1878 — Humming-Birds. [ARTICLE]

Humming-Birds.

Mr. Wallace, the distinguished naturalist, writes in the Fortnightly Review as follows: “ The humming-birds form one compact family, named Trochilidot. They are small birds, the largest known being about the size of a swallow, while the smallest are minute creatures whose bodies are hardly larger than a humblebee. Their distinguishing features are excessively short legs and feet,-very long and pointed wings, a long and slender bill, and a long, extensible tubular tongue; and these characteristics are found combined in no other birds. The feet are exceedingly small and delicate, often beautifully tufted with down, and so short as to be hardly visible beyond the plumage.' The toes are placed as in most birds, three in front and one behind, and have very strong and sharply-curved claws, and the feet serve probably to cling to their perch rather than to support the weight of the body. The wings are long and □arrow, but strongly formed, and the first quill is the longest, a peculiarity found in hardly any other birds but a few Of the swift. The bill varies greatly in length, but is always long, slender and pointed, the upper mandible being the widest and lapping over the lower at each side, thus affording complete protection to the delicate tongue, the perfect action of which is essential to the bird’s existence. The humming bird’s tongue is very long, and is capable of being greatly extended beyond the beak and rapidly drawn back by means of muscles which are attached to the hyoid or tongue bones, and bend round over the back and top of the head to the very forehead, just as in the woodpecker’s. ' The two blades or lamime, of which the tongues of birds usually seem to be formed, are here greatly lengthened, broadened out, and each rolled up, so as to form a complete double tube, connected down the middle, and with the outer edges in contact, but not united. The extremities of the tubes are, however, flat and fibrous. This tubular and retractile tongue enables the bird to suck up honey from the nectaries of flowers, and also to capture small insects; but whether the latter pass down the tubes or are entangled in the fibrous tips, and thus drawn back into the gullet, is not known. The only other birds with a tubular tongue are the sun-birds of the East, which, however, have no affinity whatever with the hummingbirds.

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