It shouldn’t come as any surprise that I am crazy about birds. I am fascinated by the shear variety and stunning beauty of our avian friends. And one of my most favorite birds is the hummingbirds. Of the nearly 9,000 species of birds in the world, about 320 are a kind of hummingbird. The majority of these hummers are found in the tropical regions of the world. In North America there are 17 species of hummers with the most of these found in southeastern Arizona. Sorry to say, we only have one species of hummer in the northland–the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris).
The ruby-throat is our smallest bird measuring only 3″ long (8 cm). Females are slightly larger than the males and have longer bill. An individual hummer weights only 2-3 grams; it takes 5 average-sized hummingbirds to equal the weight of a single Black-capped Chickadee.
Ruby-throated Hummingbirds often appear to be gray in color when viewed in dim or low light but are bright green in seen in direct sunlight. They have highly specialized feathers that contain individual cells that will absorb the sunlight and reflect only the green spectrum of sunlight back, making them appear green.
Males have a specialized throat patch called a gorget that appears black in color until he turns to face you. Then the gorget lights up in a brilliant ruby red color as if someone has flipped a switch on a neon red light. The bright ruby color is also a result of reflected sunlight. The gorget is used to attract females. The bigger and brighter the gorget the more the females are attracted.
Hummingbirds received their name from the “humming” noise created as their wings whiz through the air. Hummingbird wings flap around 50-60 times per second during normal flight and can reach up to 200 beats per second during courtship flights. (Try doing anything 200 times per second.) They can fly up to 50 mph and usually fly no higher than 300 feet.
Hummingbirds can hover, fly up and down, and are also the only birds that can fly backwards. To power all of that wing activity, the hummers have very large hearts that beat at an amazing 1,260 beats per minute compared to our own heart that beats about 70 – 90 beats per minute. Their heart is so large it comprises one quarter of a hummers total body weight.
They fuel all of their muscle activity with oxygen by breathing at 250 times per minute compared to our own respiratory effort at 12-18 per minute. To keep these flying machines going, hummingbirds have a metabolism that is 40 times that of our own. They survive on top of the line fuel—fast acting sucrose obtained from flower nectar. They consume up to 50 % of their own weight in nectar daily. That would be the same as you or I drinking a bathtub of soda daily.
Hummingbirds are one of the few birds that don’t sing a song. They communicate with a single “chip” note. Often they string a bunch of chip notes together to produce something that sounds like chattering. I guess if you look and fly as well as a hummingbird you don’t need to sing a beautiful song.
Hummers feed about every 10 minutes throughout the day but flower nectar is not the only food on their menu. Tiny insects such as gnats and flees make up most of their non-nectar diet and provide them with the protein not found in a sugar water diet. Until next time…