Question

read the passage. there are several questions about this passage.

they flash upon the inward eye
which is the bliss of solitude;
and then my heart with pleasure fills,
and dances with the daffodils.

3
wordsworth’s inner eye saw daffodils, i say the poem and see hummingbirds. the naturalists are for them, and planting the flowers is my gesture of faith that they will come back to my yard once more. as i rip open the packages and push the seeds into the dirt, i know that these tiny bright - colored - nectar - drinking birds, each of whom weighs only a few grams—about the weight of four or five of these seeds—have already whirred in erratic flocks across five hundred miles of open water, running the gulf of mexico in a twenty - six - hour heat.

4
hummers do exactly what physiologists once insisted they could not do. a bird that weighs so little, they argued, cannot go from the yucatán to the mouth of the big muddy without a refueling stop. such a dot of a bird cannot carry the extra fat it needs to get across all that water. halfway, the birds should self - destruct, should burn up and fall like a cinder. but now we know that they can carry the fat they need, and they do. instead of burning up, they land in the antebellum gardens of the south, pooped, drooped, and alive. and another spring has begun.

5
the ruby - throat is the only species of hummingbird that always turns east, that always comes north. one thousand miles to surry, maine. they will be here as the nasturtiums put out their first brave leaves.

6
hummers are built for heat and the sweet profusion of flowers. their fall migrations draw them down into mexico and central america, but it astonishes me that a bird this small flies so far north. home for some of them is right here in this clearing, a precise measure on their internal compasses, and every spring they want it back.

7
i have read that rubys survive cool maine nights by falling into torpor, a short hibernation that lowers their body temperatures and slows their metabolisms. rousing at daylight takes time and the warmth of the sun.

8
a reptilian adaptation, torpor prevents the birds from starving to death in

part a
in paragraph 3, what does the phrase open water imply about the birds’ migration?

1. storms are likely to arise during the long flight.
2. there is no place for the birds to land for food or rest.
3. there are no landmarks to help the birds find their way.
4. full darkness makes the flight confusing and dangerous.

part b
which excerpt from paragraph 4 best supports the correct answer from part a?

1. “go from the yucatán to the mouth of the big muddy without a refueling stop”
2. “halfway, the birds should self - destruct, should burn up and fall”
3. “now we know that they can carry the fat they need, and they do”
4. “instead of burning up, they land in the antebellum gardens of the south”

Explanation:

Part A

To determine what "open water" implies about the birds' migration, we analyze each option:

• Option 1: The passage doesn't mention storms during the flight, so this is incorrect.
• Option 2: "Open water" means a large expanse of water with no land, so birds can't land for food or rest there. This matches the implication of "open water" in the context of their migration over 500 miles of it.
• Option 3: The passage focuses on the difficulty of landing, not landmarks for navigation, so this is incorrect.
• Option 4: The passage doesn't relate "open water" to darkness affecting the flight, so this is incorrect.

We need to find the excerpt from paragraph 4 that supports the correct answer from Part A (birds have no place to land on open water).

• Option 1: Talks about no refueling stop, not landing for rest/food, so incorrect.
• Option 2: Discusses the expectation of self - destruction, not landing, so incorrect.
• Option 3: Talks about carrying fat, not landing, so incorrect.
• Option 4: Shows that instead of burning up (because they can't land on open water to rest/fuel), they land in the gardens of the South. This supports that there was no place to land on open water, so they had to fly to the South to land.

Answer:

1. There is no place for the birds to land for food or rest.

Part B