'Hummers' from eggs to flight!

Some interesting facts about the Hummingbird:

• Nectar drawn from flowers provides only part of the hummingbird’s food. Spiders and insects, often seized from the same plants, round out the diet.
• The Ruby-throated Hummingbird can be found in gardens and open woodlands from the Atlantic coast to the eastern edge of the Great Plains.
• Birds return to the same nesting area each year. The female alone builds the nest, between March, and usually rears two broods of two chicks each.
• Nests are cup shaped and less than two inches across. They usually straddle a small crotch on a down-sloping branch, and are lined with downy plant fibers bound together with spider web and camouflaged with moss and lichens. Hummingbirds are scarce in some areas because high levels of air pollution destroy these lichens used in nest building.
• Hummingbirds are very fast, traveling at an average 25 miles per hour, the bird’s wings beat 55 to 75 times per second. This high-speed flight means that the bird must perch frequently to save energy.
• To sustain such rapid and prolonged activity, the hummingbird's heart must beat accordingly. For birds that are hot, or sleepy, that can be as low as 50-180 beats per minute, but a heart rate of an amazing 1360 beat per minute has been recorded in a Blue-Throated Hummingbird.
• All this activity requires a humming bird to eat almost continually, to fuel the activity that will maintain its 105-109F body heat. That means dining as many as 15 times an hour, on high-energy food.
• In volume, they consume up to eight times their body weight a day. But reduce the nectar to a solid by eliminating the water, and it would amount to their own bodyweight.
• A hummingbird can starve to death in as little as two hours, if still active. That makes rescue of birds trapped in garages or other enclosed areas, imperative within a short time.
• At night, their "thermal generators" shut down as they rest, and allow their body temperature to drop, so that less energy is used up while they sleep.
• If you enjoy watching these delightful little birds, and are also an enthusiastic gardener, why not plant clumps of flowers or bushes, to bring them into your yard?
• Hummingbirds are creatures of habit, and will develop their own paths to food, checking them frequently and on a daily basis.
• Once they find out you have goodies, they'll return over and over. Other hummingbirds will follow, and you may then get to see hummingbird behavior at its worst, as they dive at each other to protect their food sources.

                                     dalesdesigns.net    †  †  †   stories, etc.