 | Sir Edward Belcher - English language - 1848 - 608 pages
...Cinnyris, Nectarinea, and Certhia, coming and going to and from this honied banquet. The Sun-birds seemed particularly delighted, clinging to the slender...coquetting with the flowers, thrusting in their slender beaks, and probing with their brush-like tongues, for insects and nectar, hanging suspended by their... | |
 | Joseph Hatton - British North Borneo - 1881 - 326 pages
...cause a slight whirring sound, but not so loud as the humming noise produced by the true humming-birds. Occasionally they may be seen clinging by their feet...busily engaged in rifling the blossoms of the trees. They appear to be as common in Borneo as they are in Ceylon, where they are familiar in the gardens.... | |
 | Temperate regions - Natural history - 1882 - 268 pages
...to cause a slight whirring sound, but not so loud as the humming noise produced by the Trochilidse. Occasionally they may be seen clinging by their feet...rifling the blossoms of the trees. I well remember," he adds, " a certain dark-leaved tree with scarlet flowers that especially courted the attention of... | |
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I well remember a certain dark-leaved tree with scarlet flowers, that especially courted the attention of the sun-birds ; and about its blossoms they continually darted with eager and vivacious movements. With this tree they seemed particularly delighted,... 