While keeping daily watch upon a nest of our common humming-bird, in the summer of 1890, I was struck with the persistent¹ absence of the head of the family. As week after week elapsed, this feature of the case excited more and more remark, and I turned to my out-of-door journal for such meagre notes as it contained of a similar nest found five years before. From these it appeared that at that time, also, the father bird was missing. Could such truancy² be habitual³ with the male ruby-throat? I had never supposed that any of our land birds were given to behaving in this ill-mannered, unnatural⁴ way, and the matter seemed to call for investigation⁵.

 

My first resort was, of course, to books. The language of Wilson and Audubon is somewhat ambiguous, but may fairly be taken as implying the male bird's presence [Pg 136]throughout the period of nidification. Nuttall speaks explicitly⁶ to the same effect, though with no specification⁷ of the grounds on which his statement is based. The later systematic⁸ biographers—Brewer, Samuels, Minot, and the authors of New England Bird Life—are silent in respect to the point. Mr. Burroughs, in Wake-Robin, mentions having found two nests, and gives us to understand that he saw only the female birds. Mrs. Treat, on the other hand, makes the father a conspicuous⁹ figure about the single nest concerning which she reports. Mr. James Russell Lowell, too, speaks of watching both parents as they fed the young ones: "The mother always alighted, while the father as uniformly remained upon the wing."

 

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