This moth
flew among the flowers of especial sweetness all day long, just as
did the hummingbirds; and I was taught that it was a bird also--the
Lady Bird. The little tan and grey thing hovering in air before the
flowers was almost as large as the humming-birds, sipping honey as
they did, swift in flight as they; and both my parents thought
it a bird.
They did not know the humming-birds were feasting on small insects
attracted by the sweets, quite as often as on honey, for they never
had examined closely. They had been taught, as I was, that this
other constant visitor to the flowers was a bird. When a child,
a humming-bird nested in a honeysuckle climbing over my mother's
bedroom window. My father lifted me, with his handkerchief bound
across my nose, on the supposition that the bird was so delicate
it would desert its nest and eggs if they were breathed upon, to
see the tiny cup of lichens, with a brown finish so fine it resembled
the lining of a chestnut burr, and two tiny eggs.
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