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that it was honey. Its gizzard however contained only acorns & quartz gravel. A Melanerpes augustifrons lit in the middle of a big bunch of the flowers & for some time dipped & drank from the honey cups around him, lifting his bill each time as if drinking water. Hummers (c. platycircus) fairly swarmed around them, often 4 or 5 on one plant at a time. I snapped my camera with as many as 3 in focus at a time & could hardly get a picture without one or more in it. They buzz & dip & dip in the freshest flowers & then catch on with their feet & sit still while they dip into the cups. I shot one to make sure that it was eating honey & found its throat filled with honey & nothing else. Its stomach was full of tiny insects. The food was so abundant that much of the time of the hummers, especially the males, was spent in girations, diving up & down & shrieking & chasing [[strikethrough]] the [[/strikethrough]] each other & the timid little females.
A couple of Aphelocoma were hanging around but I did not see them in the flowers. At one old dry seed stalk, a large