California is the land of flowers and hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are there the winged companions of the flowers. In the valleys the airy birds hover about the filmy golden mustard and the sweet-scented primroses; on the blooming hillsides in spring the air is filled with whirring wings and piping voices, as the fairy troops pass and repass at their mad gambols. At one moment the birds are circling methodically around the whorls of the blue sage; at the next, hurtling through the air after a distant companion. The great wild gooseberry bushes with red fuchsia-like flowers are like bee-hives, swarming with noisy hummers. The whizzing and whirring lead one to the bushes from a distance, and on approaching one is met by the brown spindle-like birds, darting out from the blooming shrubs, gleams of green, gold, and scarlet glancing from their gorgets.
The Little Hummer on her Bow-Knot Nest. (From a photograph.) The Little Hummer on her Bow-Knot Nest.
(From a photograph.)

The large brown hummers probably stop in the valley only on their way north, but the little black-chinned ones make their home there, and the big spreading sycamores and the great live-oaks[148] are their nesting grounds. In the big oak beside the ranch-house I have seen two or three nests at once; and a ring of live-oaks in front of the house held a complement of nests. From the hammock under the oak beside the house one could watch the birds at their work. If the front door was left open, the hummers would sometimes[149] fly inside; and as we stepped out they often darted away from the flowers growing under the windows.

California is the place of all places to study hummingbirds. The only drawback is that there are always too many other birds to watch at the same time; but one sees enough to want to see more. I never saw a hummingbird courtship unless—perhaps one performance I saw was part of the wooing. I was sitting on Mountain Billy under the little lover's sycamore when a buzzing and a whirring sounded overhead. On a twig sat a wee green lady and before her was her lover (?), who, with the sound and regularity of a spindle in a machine, swung shuttling from side to side in an arc less than a yard long. He never turned around, or took his eyes off his lady's, but threw himself back at the end of his line by a quick spread of his tail. She sat with her eyes fixed upon him, and as he moved from side to side her long bill followed him in a very droll way. When through with his dance he looked at her intently, as if to see what effect his performance had had upon her. She made some remark, apparently not to his liking, for when he had answered he flew away. She called after him, but as he did not return she stretched herself and flew up on a twig above with an amusing air of relief.

This is all I have ever seen of the courtship; but when it comes to nest-building, I have[150] often been an eye-witness to that. One little acquaintance made a nest of yellow down and put it among the green oak leaves, making me think that the laws of protective coloration had no weight with her, but before the eggs were laid she had neatly covered the yellow with flakes of green lichen. I found her one day sitting in the sun with the top of her head as white as though she had been diving into the flour barrel. Here was one of the wonderful cases of 'mutual help' in nature. The flowers supply insects and honey to the hummingbirds, and they, in turn, as they fly from blossom to blossom probing the tubes with the long slender bills that have gradually come to fit the shape of the tubes, brush off the pollen of one blossom to carry it on to the next, so enabling the plants to perfect their flowers as they could not without help. It is said that, in proportion to their numbers, hummingbirds assist as much as insects in the work of cross-fertilization.

Though this little hummer that I was watching let me come within a few feet of her, when a lizard ran under her bush she craned her neck and looked over her shoulder at him with surprising interest. She doubtless recognized him as one of her egg-eating enemies, on whose account she put her nest at the tip of a twig too slender to serve as a ladder.

Another hummingbird who built across the[151] way was still more trustful—with people. I used to sit leaning against the trunk of her oak and watch the nest, which was near the tip of one of the long swinging branches that drooped over the trail. When the tiny worker was at home, a yard-stick would almost measure the distance between us. As she sat on the nest she sometimes turned her head to look down at the dog lying beside me, and often hovered over us on going away.

The nest was saddled on a twig and glued to a glossy dark green oak leaf. Like the other nest, it was made of a spongy yellow substance, probably down from the underside of sycamore leaves; and like it, also, the outside was coated with lichen and wound with cobweb. The bird was a rapid worker, buzzing in with her material and then buzzing off after more. Once I saw the cobweb hanging from her needle-like bill, and thought she probably had been tearing down the beautiful suspension bridges the spiders hang from tree to tree.

It was very interesting to see her work. She would light on the rim of the nest, or else drop directly into the bottom of the tiny cup, and place her material with the end of her long bill. It looked like trying to sew at arm's length. She had to draw back her head in order not to reach beyond the nest. How much more convenient it would have been if her bill had been jointed! It[152] seemed better suited to probing flower tubes than making nests. But then, she made nests only in spring, while she fed from flowers all the year round, and so could afford to stretch her neck a trifle one month for the sake of having a good long fly spear during the other eleven. The peculiar feature of her work was her quivering motion in moulding. When her material was placed she moulded her nest like a potter, twirling around against the sides, sometimes pressing so hard she ruffled up the feathers of her breast. She shaped her cup as if it were a piece of clay. To round the outside, she would sit on the rim and lean over, smoothing the sides with her bill, often with the same peculiar tremulous motion. When working on the outside, at times she almost lost her balance, and fluttered to keep from falling. To turn around in the nest, she lifted herself by whirring her wings.

When she found a bit of her green lichen about to fall, she took the loose end in her bill and drew it over the edge of the nest, fastening it securely inside. She looked very wise and motherly as she sat there at work, preparing a home for her brood. After building rapidly she would take a short rest on a twig in the sun, while she plumed her feathers. She made nest-making seem very pleasant work.

One day, wanting to experiment, I put a handful of oak blossoms on the nest. They covered[153] the cup and hung down over the sides. When the small builder came, she hovered over it a few seconds before making u............