I am amply
impressed with hummingbirds. They are
the smallest migrating birds. Hummingbirds
arrive in the forests around my cabin in late spring and whiz about until the
end of July.
The average hummingbird
weighs less then a nickel, but is equipped for fulltime racing. They do everything fast. An average hummingbird’s heart rate is more
than 1,200 beats per minute (a human's average heart rate is only 60 to 100
beats per minute). While in normal flight,
North American hummingbirds average around 53 wing beats per second. When sipping nectar, the diminutive birds move
their tongue in and out about 13 times per second.
And they need a
lot of energy. A hummingbird can consume
up to double its body weight in a day.
Their diet, in addition to sipping nectar found in flowers and feeders,
includes small insects and spiders.
Though hummingbirds
cannot hop or walk, they are the only bird capable of flying backwards.
A flock of
hummingbirds (I have never seen such) can be referred to as a bouquet, a
glittering, a hover, a shimmer, or a tune.
Yesterday, I saw a
single hummingbird near my cabin. While
standing near the creek, chatting with four of my mountain neighbors, one of
them pointed up. “Look, there is a
hummingbird!”
Sure enough, about
ten feet above us and just a little off to the side, a hummingbird was hovering
in place. The bird remained there for
twenty of so seconds—seemingly standing against the sun.
Guess what that
little bird did next?
The bird issued a sparkling
little spray of poo that drifted down toward where we stood clustered in the
green grass.
A bird is a bird,
no matter how small.
—Mitchell
Hegman
No comments:
Post a Comment