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Common Questions People Ask About Hummingbirds
Zoe Ann Hinds
Hummingbirds are such tiny amazing creatures. I’m always fascinated by them and the amount of interest people have in these birds. I’m always discovering some unique and fascinating fact about them. If you are like most people who enjoy hummingbirds, then there are probably some questions you have about hummingbirds to which you have wanted an answer but you have never taken the time to discover that answer for yourself. Well, this article was written specifically with you in mind. The questions discussed here are very general in nature, but these are some that I find many people still have and would like to have answered. The questions are not answered in any particular order, so no question should be seen as having more importance than any other one.
Why are they called hummingbirds? The answer to this is quite simple. These birds are called hummingbirds because their wings beat so fast while they are in flight that their wings make a humming sound. On average, a hummingbird’s wings beat between 75 – 80 times each second, but in some species 200 beats per second has been documented during courtship displays.
How big are hummingbirds? The answer to this question depends on which species of hummingbird to which you are referring. For example, Ruby-throated hummingbirds are 3 - 3 3/4 inches long with a wingspan of 4 - 4 3/4 inches. Rufous hummingbirds are 3 1/2 - 4 inches long with a wingspan of 4 1/4 inches.
How much do hummingbirds weigh? The answer to this question depends on which species of hummingbird to which you are referring. The smallest hummingbird is the bee hummingbird which only weighs a little less than two grams. The largest hummingbird is known as the giant hummingbird and it weighs between 21 and 23 grams. According to hummingbird expert Laura Erickson, you could mail nine or ten hummingbirds with a single stamp! This should help give you some idea just how extremely tiny hummingbirds are.
Why are females larger then males? Female hummingbirds are solely responsible for the care and rearing of the young. Therefore, the females need to be a tiny bit bigger to be able to produce eggs, to afford to share their body heat with the eggs while incubating, and to be able to share their food when feeding nestlings. Male hummingbirds are the tiniest warm-blooded animals on the planet.
Why do hummingbirds have such brilliant iridescent throat feathers? Only male hummingbirds have the brilliant iridescent throat feathers. These feathers serve two very important functions: attracting a female and defending their territory. They use these to display to one another. Females find it attractive, and other males are repelled. Male hummingbirds are extremely feisty and territorial and these feathers are part of their territorial display.
What causes a hummingbird’s colors to have a metallic sheen? This is caused by the refraction of incident light by the structures of certain feathers. Like any prism, these structures split light into its component colors, and only certain frequencies are refracted back to your eyes. The apparent color of any particular part of a feather depends upon the distance between the microscopic ridges in its grid like structure. The resulting colors are much more vivid and iridescent than those of birds with only pigmented feathers. Not all hummer colors are due to feather structure. Iridescent hummingbird colors actually result from a combination of refraction and pigmentation, since the diffraction structures themselves are made of melanin, a pigment.What is unusual about a hummingbird's flying? The hummingbird is the only bird with the ability to fly forwards, backwards, up, down, sideways, or sit in sheer space. This is because the hummingbird has the ability to rotate its wings in a full circle. Whenever hovering, the hummingbird will move their wings forward and backwards in a repeated figure eight. Hummingbirds even have the ability to fly short distances upside down. This is known as a trick rollover and hummingbirds will use this maneuver whenever they are being attacked by another bird.
How is a hummingbird's body adapted to its lifestyle and habitat? The pectoral or flight muscles of a hummingbird accounts for ¼ of its total body weight. In humans, the pectoral muscles account for 5 percent of our total body weight. The muscle fibers in hummingbird pectoral muscles enables hummingbirds to keep a rich supply of blood and oxygen flowing into their muscles as they fly, so they don't tire even with their rapid wing rate. Their beaks are designed to probe into many species of small flowers and to snap up tiny flying insects. The hummingbird laps up nectar by flicking its long, forked tongue deep within a flower at rates up to ten times per second. Its efficiency as a pollinator is comparable to that of a honey bee.
How do a hummingbird’s senses compare with a human's? Hummingbird vision is much greater then ours in many ways. Hummingbirds can see things at a farther distance, and are able to see a wider spectrum of colors than we can, into the ultraviolet range. They are especially attracted to the color red. A hummingbird reacts to sights much more quickly than we can. A hummingbird's hearing is more finely tuned than ours. It can hear higher-pitched sounds than we can, and can hear tiny differences in sound quality that our ears just simply can't detect. The hummingbird’s sense of touch is not as fine tuned as ours in some ways, although it can construct a nest with amazing accuracy relying partly on this sense. Hummingbirds probably cannot taste as many flavors as we can, though they apparently notice exactly how sweet nectar is, and prefer it very sweet. Hummingbirds do not have a sense of smell, as far as is known. They use their eyesight to help them locate nectar sources and to get insects out of the air or off leaves.
While each of these questions may seem to be very basic in nature, you would be surprised how many times I have been asked them and others like them. I hope the information here has proven to be enlightening and informative.
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