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Ruby-throated Humming-bird
Adult male--Upper parts metallic green, wings and tail brownish; under parts, throat metallic red or deep orange red, breast and belly light gray shading into gray on the sides.
Adult female--Lacks the ruby throat. Length--3.74.
Breeding Range--Throughout the Eastern States.
The nest is, as Minot says, a perfect type of bird architecture. It is composed of woolly vegetable substance and other soft material, covered on the outside with small pieces of lichen, fastened on with spiders' or caterpillars' web or plant fibres. The nest is about three-quarters of an inch inside diameter, and usually rather more than half an inch deep (inside). It is saddled on the branch of a tree at from ten to fifty feet from the ground. There are instances on record of the nests having been found attached to tree trunks and on tall weeds. 2 white eggs are laid. Size--.50 x .30.
Of about four hundred species of humming-birds known to ornithology the Ruby-throat is the only variety found east of the Mississippi.
About the first week in May they arrive in the vicinity of New York, and begin nesting about three weeks later. The young remain in the nest for some three weeks.