Length	3.5 to 3.75 inches. A trifle over half as long as the English sparrow. The smallest bird we have.
Male	Bright metallic green above; wings and tail darkest, with ruddy-purplish reflections and dusky-white tips on outer tail quills. Throat and breast brilliant metallic -- red in one light, orange flame in another, and dusky orange in another, according as the light strikes the plumage. Sides greenish; underneath lightest gray, with whitish border outlining the brilliant breast. Bill long and needle-like.
Female	Without the brilliant feathers on throat; darker gray beneath. Outer tail-quills are banded with black and tipped with white.
Range	Eastern North America, from northern Canada to the Gulf Of Mexico in summer. Winters in Central America.
Migrations	May. October. Common summer resident.

This smallest, most exquisite and unabashed of our bird neighbors cannot be mistaken, for it is the only one of its kin found east of the plains and north of Florida - although about four hundred species of hummingbirds - native only to the New World, have been named by scientists.

How does it happen that this little tropical jewel alone flashes about our Northern gardens?

Does the Ruby Throated Hummer never stir the spirit of adventure and emulation in the glistening breasts of its stay-at-home cousins in the tropics by tales of luxuriant tangles of honeysuckle and clematis on our cottage porches; of deep-cupped trumpet-flowers climbing over the walls of old-fashioned gardens, where larkspur, narcissus, roses, and phlox, that crowd the box-edged beds, are more gay and honey-laden than their little brains can picture?

Apparently it takes only the wish to be in a place to transport one of these little fairies either from the honeysuckle trellis to the canna lily bed or from Yucatan to the Hudson. It is easy to see how to will and to fly are allied in the minds of the hummingbirds, as they are in the Latin tongue.

One minute poised in midair, apparently motionless before a flower while draining the nectar from its deep cup -- though the humming of its wings tells that it is suspended there by no magic -- the next instant it has flashed out of sight as if a fairy's wand had made it suddenly invisible.

Without seeing the hummingbird, it might be, and often is, mistaken for a bee improving the "shining hour."

At evening one often hears of a "humming bird" going the rounds of the garden, but at this hour it is usually the sphinx-moth hovering above the flower-beds -- the one other creature besides the bee for which the bird is ever mistaken.

The postures and preferences of this beautiful large moth make the mistake a very natural one.

The ruby-throated is strangely fearless and unabashed. It will dart among the vines on the veranda while the entire household are assembled there, and add its hum to that of the conversation in a most delightfully neighborly way.

Once a glistening little sprite, quite undaunted by the size of an audience that sat almost breathless enjoying his beauty, thrust his bill into one calyx after another on a long sprig of honeysuckle held in the hand.

And yet, with all its friendliness - or is it simply fearlessness? - the bird is a desperate duelist, and will lunge his deadly blade into the jeweled breast of an enemy at the slightest provocation and quicker than thought. All the heat of his glowing throat seems to be transferred to his head while the fight continues, sometimes even to the death -- a cruel, but marvelously beautiful sight as the glistening birds dart and tumble about beyond the range of peace-makers.

High up in a tree, preferably one whose knots and lichen-covered excrescences are calculated to help conceal the nest that so cleverly imitates them, the mother humming-bird saddles her exquisite cradle to a horizontal limb. She lines it with plant down, fluffy bits from cat-tails, and the fronds of fern, felting the material into a circle that an elm-leaf amply roofs over. Outside, lichens or bits of bark blend the nest so harmoniously with its surroundings that one may look long and thoroughly before discovering it. Two infinitesimal, white eggs tax the nest accommodation to its utmost.

In the mating season the female may be seen perching -- a posture one rarely catches her gay lover in -- preening her dainty but somber feathers with ladylike nicety. The young birds do a great deal of perching before they gain the marvelously rapid wing-motions of maturity, but they are ready to fly within three weeks after they are hatched. By the time the trumpet-vine is in bloom they dart and sip and utter a shrill little squeak among the flowers, in company with the old birds.

During the nest-building and incubation the male hummingbird keeps so aggressively on the defensive that he often betrays to a hitherto unsuspecting intruder the location of his home. After the young birds have to be fed he is most diligent in collecting food, that consists not alone of the sweet juices of flowers, as is popularly supposed, but also of aphides and plant-lice that his proboscis-like tongue licks off the garden foliage literally like a streak of lightning.

Both parents feed the young by regurgitation - a process disgusting to the human observer, whose stomach involuntarily revolts at the sight so welcome to the tiny, squeaking, hungry birds.

RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET (Regulus calendula)
Kinglet Family
AKA: RUBY-CROWNED WREN; RUBY-CROWNED WARBLER

Length	4.25 to 4.5 inches.
Male	Upper parts grayish olive-green, brighter nearer the tail. Wings and tail dusky, edged with yellowish olive. Two whitish wing-bars. Breast and underneath light yellowish gray. In the adult male a vermilion spot on crown of his ash-gray head.
Female	Similar, but without the vermilion crest.
Range	North America. Breeds from northern United States northward. Winters from southern limits of its breeding range to Central America and Mexico.
Migrations	October. April. Rarely a winter resident at the North. Most common during its migrations.

A trifle larger than the golden-crowned kinglet, with a vermilion crest instead of a yellow and flame one, and with a decided preference for a warmer winter climate, and the ruby-crown's chief distinguishing characteristics are told. These rather confusing relatives would be less puzzling if it were the habit of either to keep quiet long enough to focus the opera-glasses on their crowns, which it only rarely is while some particularly promising haunt of
insects that lurk beneath the rough bark of the evergreens has to be thoroughly explored. At all other times both kinglets keep up an incessant fluttering and twinkling among the twigs and leaves at the ends of the
branches, jerking their tiny bodies from twig to twig in the shrubbery, hanging head downward, like a nuthatch, and most industriously feeding every second upon the tiny insects and larvae hidden beneath the bark and leaves.

They seem to be the feathered expression of perpetual motion. And how dainty and charming these tiny sprites are! They are not at all shy; you may approach them quite close if you will, for the birds are simply too intent on their
business to be concerned with yours.

If a sharp lookout be kept for these ruby-crowned migrants, that too often slip away to the south before we know they have come, we notice that they appear about a fortnight ahead of the golden-crested species, since the mild, soft air of our Indian summer is exactly to their liking. At this season there is nothing in the bird's "thin, metallic call-note, like a vibrating wire," to indicate that he is one of our finest songsters. But listen for him during the spring migration, when a love-song is already ripening in his tiny throat.

What a volume of rich, lyrical melody pours from the Norway spruce, where the little musician is simply practicing to perfect the richer, fuller song that he sings to his nesting mate in the far north! The volume is really
tremendous, coming from so tiny a throat. Those who have heard it in northern Canada describe it as a flute-like and mellow warble full of intricate phrases past the imitating. Dr. Coues says of it: "The kinglet's exquisite vocalization defies description."

Curiously enough, the nest of this bird, that is not at all rare, has been discovered only six times. It would appear to be over large for the tiny bird, until we remember that kinglets are wont to have a numerous progeny in their pensile, globular home. It is made of light, flimsy material -- moss, strips of bark, and plant fibre well knit together and closely lined with feathers, which must be a grateful addition to the babies, where they are reared in evergreens in cold, northern woods.

GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET (Regulus satrapa)
Kinglet Family
AKA: GOLDEN-CROWNED GOLDCREST; FIERY CROWNED WREN

Length	4 to 4.25 inches.
Male	Upper parts grayish olive-green; wings and tail dusky, margined with olive-green. Underneath soiled whitish. Center of crown bright orange, bordered by yellow and en. closed by black line. Cheeks gray; a whitish line over the eye.
Female	Similar, but center of crown lemon-yellow and more grayish underneath.
Range	North America generally. Breeds from northern United States northward. Winters chiefly from North Carolina to Central America, but many remain north all year.
Migrations	September. April. Chiefly a winter resident south Of Canada.

If this cheery little winter neighbor would keep quiet long enough, we might have a glimpse of the golden crest that distinguishes him from his equally lively cousin, the ruby-crowned; but he is so constantly flitting about the
ends of the twigs, peering at the bark for hidden insects, twinkling his wings and fluttering among the evergreens with more nervous restlessness than a vireo, that you may know him well before you have a glimpse of his tri-colored crown.

When the autumn foliage is all aglow with yellow and flame this tiny sprite comes out of the north where neither nesting nor molting could rob him of his cheerful spirits.

Except the humming-bird and the winter wren, he is the
smallest bird we have. And yet, somewhere stored up in his diminutive body, is warmth enough to withstand zero weather. With evident enjoyment of the cold, he calls out a shrill, wiry zee, zee, zee, that rings merrily from the pines and spruces when our fingers are too numb to hold the opera glasses in an attempt to follow his restless fittings from branch to branch. Is it one of the unwritten laws of birds that the smaller their bodies the greater their activity?

When you see one kinglet about, you may be sure there are others not far away, for, except in the nesting season, its habits are distinctly social, its friendliness extending to the humdrum brown creeper, the chickadees, and the nuthatches, in whose company it is often seen; indeed, it is likely to be in almost any flock of the winter birds. They are a merry band as they go exploring the trees together. The kinglet can hang upside down, too, like the other acrobats, many of whose tricks he has learned; and it can pick off insects from a tree with as business-like an air as the brown creeper, but with none of that soulless bird's plodding precision.

In the early spring, just before this busy little sprite leaves us to nest in Canada or Labrador - for heat is the one thing that he can't cheerfully endure - a gushing, lyrical song bursts from his tiny throat. A song whose volume is so out of proportion to the bird's size that Nuttall's classification of kinglets with wrens doesn't seem far wrong after all.

Only rarely is a nest found so far south as the White Mountains. It is said to be extraordinarily large for so small a bird but that need not surprise us when we learn that as many as ten creamy-white eggs, blotched with brown and lavender, are no uncommon number for the pensile cradle to hold.

How do the tiny parents contrive to cover so many eggs and to feed such a nest full of fledglings?

TREE SWALLOW (Tachycineta bicolor)
Swallow family
AKA: WHITE-BELLIED SWALLOW

Length	5 to 6 inches. A little shorter than the English sparrow, but apparently much larger because of its wide wing spread.
Male	Lustrous dark steel-green above. Darker and shading into black on wings and tail, which is forked. Under parts soft white.
Female	Duller than male.
Range	North America, from Hudson Bay to Panama.
Migrations	End of March. September or later. Summer resident.

"The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times: and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming." -- Jeremiah, viii. 7.

The earliest of the family to appear in the spring, the tree swallow comes skimming over the freshly ploughed fields with a wide sweep of the wings, in what appears to be a perfect ecstasy of flight.

More shy of the haunts of man, and less gregarious than its cousins, the Tree Swallow is usually to be seen during migration flying low over the marshes, ponds, and streams with a few chosen friends, keeping up an incessant warbling twitter while performing their bewildering and tireless evolutions as they catch their food on the wing.

Their white breasts flash in the sunlight, and it is only when they dart near you, and skim close along the surface of the water, that you discover their backs to be not black, but rich, dark green, glossy to iridescence.

It is probable that these birds keep near the waterways because their favorite insects and wax-berries are more plentiful in such places: but this peculiarity has led many people to the absurd belief that the tree swallow buries itself under the mud of ponds in winter in a state of hibernation. No bird's breathing apparatus is made to operate under mud.

In unsettled districts Tree Swallows nest in hollow trees, hence their name; but with that laziness that forms a part of the degeneracy of civilization, they now gladly accept the boxes about men's homes set up for the martins. Thousands of these beautiful birds have been shot on the Long Island marshes and sold to New York epicures for snipe.

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