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 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 way was still more
trustful--with people. I used to sit leaning agai