Hummingbird facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Hummingbird |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Four hummingbirds from Trinidad and Tobago |
|
Scientific classification  |
|
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Apodiformes |
| Family: | Trochilidae Vigors, 1825 |
| Type genus | |
| Trochilus Linnaeus, 1758
|
|
| Subfamilies | |
|
Subfamiles:
†Eurotrochilus
Florisuginae Phaethornithinae Polytminae Lesbiinae Patagoninae Trochilinae (For an alphabetic species list, see List of hummingbird species) |
|
Hummingbirds are small birds of the family Trochilidae.
They are among the smallest of birds: most species measure 7.5–13 cm (3–5 in). The smallest living bird species is the 2–5 cm Bee Hummingbird.
Hummingbirds can hover in mid-air by rapidly flapping their wings 12–80 times per second (depending on the species). They can fly at speeds over 15 m/s (54 km/h, 34 mi/h).
Contents
Description
_adult_male_non-breeding.jpg)
Hummingbirds have compact bodies with relatively long, bladelike wings having anatomical structure enabling helicopter-like flight in any direction, including the ability to hover.
.jpg)
Hummingbird legs are short with no knees, and have feet with three toes pointing forward and one backward. The toes of hummingbirds are formed as claws with ridged inner surfaces to aid gripping onto flower stems or petals. Hummingbirds do not walk on the ground or hop like most birds, but rather shuffle laterally and use their feet to grip while perching, preening feathers, or nest-building (by females), and during fights to grab feathers of opponents.
Hummingbirds apply their legs as pistons for generating thrust upon taking flight, although the shortness of their legs provides about 20% less propulsion than assessed in other birds. During flight, hummingbird feet are tucked up under the body, enabling optimal aerodynamics and maneuverability.
Sexual dimorphisms
_JCB.jpg)
The sexes differ in feather coloration, with males having distinct brilliance and ornamentation of head, neck, wing, and breast feathers. The most typical feather ornament in males is the gorget – a bib-like iridescent neck-feather patch that changes brilliance with the viewing angle to attract females and warn male competitors away from territory.
For males and females of the same size, females tend to have larger bills. Bill differences likely evolved due to constraints imposed by courtship, because mating displays of male hummingbirds require complex aerial maneuvers. Males tend to be smaller than females, allowing conservation of energy to forage competitively and participate more frequently in courtship.
Female hummingbirds tend to be larger, requiring more energy, with longer beaks that allow for more effective reach into crevices of tall flowers for nectar. Thus, females are better at foraging, acquiring flower nectar, and supporting the energy demands of their larger body size.
Range
Hummingbirds are restricted to the Americas from south central Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, including the Caribbean. The majority of species occur in tropical and subtropical Central and South America, but several species also breed in temperate climates and some hillstars occur even in alpine Andean highlands at altitudes up to 5,200 m (17,100 ft).
The greatest species richness is in humid tropical and subtropical forests of the northern Andes and adjacent foothills, but the number of species found in the Atlantic Forest, Central America or southern Mexico also far exceeds the number found in southern South America, the Caribbean islands, the United States, and Canada. While fewer than 25 different species of hummingbirds have been recorded from the United States and fewer than 10 from Canada and Chile each, Colombia alone has more than 160 and the comparably small Ecuador has about 130 species.
Feeding
Hummingbirds are the only birds for whom nectar typically comprises the vast majority of energy intake. A hummingbird may have to visit one or two thousand flowers daily to meet energy demands.
Although a high-quality source of energy, nectar is deficient in many macro- and micronutrients; it tends to be low in lipids, and although it may contain trace quantities of amino acids, some essential acids are severely or entirely lacking. Though hummingbird protein requirements appear to be quite small, at 1.5% of the diet, nectar is still an inadequate source; most if not all hummingbirds therefore supplement their diet with the consumption of invertebrates.
Typically, they hawk for small flying insects, but also glean spiders from their webs. Bill shape may play a role, as hummingbirds with longer or more curved bills may be unable to hawk efficiently, and so rely more heavily on gleaning spiders. Regardless of bill shape, spiders are a common prey item; other very common prey items include flies, especially those of the family Chironomidae, as well as various Hymenopterans (such as wasps and ants) and Hemipterans.
Hummingbirds do not spend all day flying, as the energy cost would be prohibitive; the majority of their activity consists simply of sitting or perching. Hummingbirds eat many small meals and consume around half their weight in nectar (twice their weight in nectar, if the nectar is 25% sugar) each day. Hummingbirds digest their food rapidly due to their small size and high metabolism; a mean retention time less than an hour has been reported. Hummingbirds spend an average of 20% of their time feeding and 75–80% sitting and digesting.
Because their high metabolism makes them vulnerable to starvation, hummingbirds are highly attuned to food sources. Some species, including many found in North America, are territorial and try to guard food sources (such as a feeder) against other hummingbirds, attempting to ensure a future food supply. Additionally, hummingbirds have an enlarged hippocampus, a brain region facilitating spatial memory used to map flowers previously visited during nectar foraging.
Feeders
In the wild, hummingbirds visit flowers for food, extracting nectar, which is 55% sucrose, 24% glucose, and 21% fructose on a dry-matter basis. Hummingbirds also take sugar-water from bird feeders, which allow people to observe and enjoy hummingbirds up close while providing the birds with a reliable source of energy, especially when flower blossoms are less abundant. A negative aspect of artificial feeders, however, is that the birds may seek less flower nectar for food, and so may reduce the amount of pollination their feeding naturally provides.
White granulated sugar is used in hummingbird feeders in a 20% concentration as a common recipe, although hummingbirds will defend feeders more aggressively when sugar content is at 35%, indicating preference for nectar with higher sugar content. Organic and "raw" sugars contain iron, which can be harmful, and brown sugar, agave syrup, molasses, and artificial sweeteners also should not be used. Honey is made by bees from the nectar of flowers, but it is not good to use in feeders because when it is diluted with water, microorganisms easily grow in it, causing it to spoil rapidly.
Red food dye was once thought to be a favorable ingredient for the nectar in home feeders, but it is unnecessary. Commercial products sold as "instant nectar" or "hummingbird food" may also contain preservatives or artificial flavors, as well as dyes, which are unnecessary and potentially harmful. Although some commercial products contain small amounts of nutritional additives, hummingbirds obtain all necessary nutrients from the insects they eat, rendering added nutrients unnecessary.
Metabolism
Hummingbirds have the highest metabolism of all vertebrate animals – a necessity to support the rapid beating of their wings during hovering and fast forward flight.
They are rare among vertebrates in their ability to rapidly make use of ingested sugars to fuel energetically expensive hovering flight, powering up to 100% of their metabolic needs with the sugars they drink. Hummingbirds can use newly ingested sugars to fuel hovering flight within 30–45 minutes of consumption.
By relying on newly ingested sugars to fuel flight, hummingbirds reserve their limited fat stores to sustain their overnight fasting during torpor or to power migratory flights. Studies of hummingbird metabolism address how a migrating ruby-throated hummingbird can cross 800 km (500 mi) of the Gulf of Mexico on a nonstop flight. This hummingbird, like other long-distance migrating birds, stores fat as a fuel reserve, augmenting its weight by as much as 100%, then enabling metabolic fuel for flying over open water. The amount of fat (1–2 g) used by a migrating hummingbird to cross the Gulf of Mexico in a single flight is similar to that used by a human climbing about 50 feet (15 m).
The heart rate of hummingbirds can reach as high as 1,260 beats per minute, a rate measured in a blue-throated hummingbird with a breathing rate of 250 breaths per minute at rest.
Torpor
The metabolism of hummingbirds can slow at night or at any time when food is not readily available. This special body mechanism is called torpor, a state similar to hibernation. Use and duration of torpor vary among hummingbird species and are affected by whether a dominant bird defends territory, with nonterritorial subordinate birds having longer periods of torpor. A hummingbird with a higher fat percentage will be less likely to enter a state of torpor compared to one with less fat, as a bird can use the energy from its fat stores. Torpor in hummingbirds appears to be unrelated to nighttime temperature, as it occurs across a wide temperature range, with energy savings of such deep sleep being more related to the photoperiod and duration of torpor.
During nighttime torpor, body temperature in a Caribbean hummingbird was shown to fall from 40 to 18 °C, with heart and breathing rates slowing dramatically (heart rate of roughly 50 to 180 bpm from its daytime rate of higher than 1000 bpm). During cold nights at altitude, hummingbirds were in torpor for 2–13 hours depending on species.
Adaptation to winter
Anna's hummingbird is a non-migrating resident of Seattle where it lives year-round through winter enduring extended periods of subfreezing temperatures, snow, and high winds. During cold temperatures, Anna's hummingbirds gradually gain weight during the day as they convert sugar to fat. In addition, hummingbirds with inadequate stores of body fat or insufficient plumage are able to survive periods of subfreezing weather by lowering their metabolic rate and entering a state of torpor.
Humming
Humming serves communication purposes by alerting other birds of the arrival of a fellow forager or potential mate. The humming sound derives from aerodynamic forces generated by the downstrokes and upstrokes of the rapid wingbeats, causing oscillations and harmonics that evoke an acoustic quality likened to that of a musical instrument. The humming sound of hummingbirds is unique among flying animals, compared to the whine of mosquitoes, buzz of bees, and "whoosh" of larger birds.
Flight
Hummingbird flight has been studied intensively from an aerodynamic perspective using wind tunnels and high-speed video cameras. Two studies of rufous or Anna's hummingbirds in a wind tunnel used particle image velocimetry techniques to investigate the lift generated on the bird's upstroke and downstroke. The birds produced 75% of their weight support during the downstroke and 25% during the upstroke, with the wings making a "figure 8" motion.
Many earlier studies had assumed that lift was generated equally during the two phases of the wingbeat cycle, as is the case of insects of a similar size. This finding shows that hummingbird hovering is similar to, but distinct from, that of hovering insects such as the hawk moth.
The giant hummingbird's wings beat as few as 12 times per second, and the wings of typical hummingbirds beat up to 80 times per second. As air density decreases, for example, at higher altitudes, the amount of power a hummingbird must use to hover increases. Hummingbird species adapted for life at higher altitudes, therefore, have larger wings to help offset these negative effects of low air density on lift generation.
A slow-motion video has shown how the hummingbirds deal with rain when they are flying. To remove the water from their heads, they shake their heads and bodies, similar to a dog shaking, to shed water. Further, when raindrops collectively may weigh as much as 38% of the bird's body weight, hummingbirds shift their bodies and tails horizontally, beat their wings faster, and reduce their wings' angle of motion when flying in heavy rain.
Vocalizations
Many hummingbird species exhibit a diverse vocal repertoire of chirps, squeaks, whistles and buzzes. Vocalizations vary in complexity and spectral content during social interactions, foraging, territorial defense, courtship, and mother-nestling communication.
The blue-throated hummingbird's song differs from typical oscine songs in its wide frequency range, extending from 1.8 kHz to about 30 kHz. It also produces ultrasonic vocalizations which do not function in communication. As blue-throated hummingbirds often alternate singing with catching small flying insects, it is possible the ultrasonic clicks produced during singing disrupt insect flight patterns, making insects more vulnerable to predation.
Reproduction
.jpg)
Male hummingbirds do not take part in nesting. Most species build a cup-shaped nest on the branch of a tree or shrub. The nest varies in size relative to the particular species – from smaller than half a walnut shell to several centimeters in diameter.
Many hummingbird species use spider silk and lichen to bind the nest material together and secure the structure. The unique properties of the silk allow the nest to expand as the young hummingbirds grow. Two white eggs are laid, which despite being the smallest of all bird eggs, are large relative to the adult hummingbird's size. Incubation lasts 14 to 23 days, depending on the species, ambient temperature, and female attentiveness to the nest. The mother feeds her nestlings on small arthropods and nectar by inserting her bill into the open mouth of a nestling, and then regurgitating the food into its crop. Hummingbirds stay in the nest for 18–22 days, after which they leave the nest to forage on their own, although the mother bird may continue feeding them for another 25 days.
Migration
Relatively few hummingbirds migrate as a percentage of the total number of species; of the roughly 366 known hummingbird species, only 12–15 species migrate annually.
Most North American hummingbirds migrate southward in fall to spend winter in Mexico, the Caribbean Islands, or Central America. A few species are year-round residents of Florida, California, and the southwestern desert regions of the US. Among these are Anna's hummingbird, a common resident from southern Arizona and inland California, and the buff-bellied hummingbird, a winter resident from Florida across the Gulf Coast to South Texas. Ruby-throated hummingbirds are common along the Atlantic flyway, and migrate in summer from as far north as Atlantic Canada, returning to Mexico, South America, southern Texas, and Florida to winter. During winter in southern Louisiana, black-chinned, buff-bellied, calliope, Allen's, Anna's, ruby-throated, rufous, broad-tailed, and broad-billed hummingbirds are present.
The rufous hummingbird breeds farther north than any other species of hummingbird, spending summers along coastal British Columbia and Alaska, and wintering in the southwestern United States and Mexico, with some distributed along the coasts of the subtropical Gulf of Mexico and Florida. By migrating in spring as far north as the Yukon or southern Alaska, the rufous hummingbird migrates more extensively and nests farther north than any other hummingbird species, and must tolerate occasional temperatures below freezing in its breeding territory. This cold hardiness enables it to survive temperatures below freezing, provided that adequate shelter and food are available.
As calculated by displacement of body size, the rufous hummingbird makes perhaps the longest migratory journey of any bird in the world. At just over 3 inches (7.6 cm) long, rufous hummingbirds travel 3,900 miles (6,300 km) one-way from Alaska to Mexico in late summer, a distance equal to 78,470,000 body lengths, then make the return journey in the following spring. By comparison, the 13 inches (33 cm)-long Arctic tern makes a one-way flight of about 18,000 kilometres (11,000 mi), or 51,430,000 body lengths, just 65% of the body displacement during migration by rufous hummingbirds.
The northward migration of rufous hummingbirds occurs along the Pacific flyway, and may be time-coordinated with flower and tree-leaf emergence in early spring, and also with availability of insects as food. Arrival at breeding grounds before nectar availability from mature flowers may jeopardize breeding opportunities.
Lifespan
Hummingbirds have unusually long lifespans for organisms with such rapid metabolisms. Though many die during their first year of life, especially in the vulnerable period between hatching and fledging, those that survive may occasionally live a decade or more. Among the better-known North American species, the typical lifespan is probably 3 to 5 years. For comparison, the smaller shrews, among the smallest of all mammals, seldom live longer than 2 years. The longest recorded lifespan in the wild relates to a female broad-tailed hummingbird that was banded as an adult at least one year old, then recaptured 11 years later, making her at least 12 years old. Other longevity records for banded hummingbirds include an estimated minimum age of 10 years 1 month for a female black-chinned hummingbird similar in size to the broad-tailed hummingbird, and at least 11 years 2 months for a much larger buff-bellied hummingbird.
Natural enemies
Predators
Praying mantises have been observed as predators of hummingbirds. Other predators include domestic cats, dragonflies, frogs, orb-weaver spiders, and other birds, such as the roadrunner.
Parasites
Hummingbirds host a highly specialized lice fauna. Two genera of Ricinid lice, Trochiloecetes and Trochiliphagus, are specialized on them, often infesting 5–15% of their populations. In contrast, two genera of Menoponid lice, Myrsidea and Leremenopon, are extremely rare on them.
Population estimates and threatened species
Although most hummingbird species live in remote habitats where their population numbers are difficult to assess, population studies in the United States and Canada indicate that the ruby-throated hummingbird numbers are around 34 million, rufous hummingbirds are around 19 million, black-chinned, Anna's, and broad-tailed hummingbirds are about 8 million each, calliopes at 4 million, and Costa's and Allen's hummingbirds are around 2 million each. Several species exist only in the thousands or hundreds.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species in 2024, 8 hummingbird species are classified as critically endangered, 13 are endangered, 13 are vulnerable, and 20 species are near-threatened. Two species – the Brace's emerald (Riccordia bracei) and Caribbean emerald (Riccordia elegans) – have been declared extinct.
.jpg)
Of the 15 species of North American hummingbirds that inhabit the United States and Canada, several have changed their range of distribution, while others showed declines in numbers since the 1970s, including in 2023 with dozens of hummingbird species in decline. As of the 21st century, rufous, Costa's, calliope, broad-tailed, and Allen's hummingbirds are in significant decline, some losing as much as 67% of their numbers since 1970 at nearly double the rate of population loss over the previous 50 years. The ruby-throated hummingbird population – the most populous North American hummingbird – decreased by 17% over the early 21st century. Habitat loss, glass collisions, cat predation, pesticides, and possibly climate change affecting food availability, migration signals, and breeding are factors that may contribute to declining hummingbird numbers.
Interesting facts about the hummingbird
- The bird is named for the prominent humming sound its wingbeats make while flying.
- To sustain rapid wingbeats during flight and hovering, hummingbirds expend the human equivalent of 150,000 calories per day, an amount estimated to be 10 times the energy consumption by a marathon runner in competition.
- To conserve energy when food is scarce, the bird can enter a deep-sleep state, known as torpor, and slow its metabolic rate to 1⁄15 of its normal rate.
- While most hummingbirds do not migrate, the rufous hummingbird has one of the longest migrations among birds, traveling twice per year between Alaska and Mexico, a distance of about 3,900 miles (6,300 km).
- Hummingbird's eyes occupy a larger proportion of the skull compared to other birds and animals, which gives exceptional visual acuity.
- During flight and hovering, oxygen consumption per gram of muscle tissue in a hummingbird is about 10 times higher than that measured in elite human athletes.
- Hummingbirds drink with their long tongues by rapidly lapping nectar. Their tongues have semicircular tubes which run down their lengths to facilitate nectar consumption via rapid pumping in and out of the nectar.
- Hummingbirds are the only group of birds able to fly backwards.
- Anna's hummingbird is the official city bird of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Images for kids
-
A nesting female Allen's hummingbird
-
A color plate illustration from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (1899), showing a variety of hummingbirds
-
Male Anna's hummingbird showing iridescent crown and gorget feathers
-
Male rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) displaying a proportionally large eye in relation to its head
-
Drawing of a hummingbird tongue; 1874, unknown artist. Upon reaching nectar in a flower, the tongue splits into opposing tips fringed with lamellae and grooves, which fill with nectar, then retracts to a cylindrical configuration into the bill to complete the drink.
-
Lesser violetear at a flower
-
Male ruby-throated hummingbird displaying his tongue
-
Hummingbird theme on the Caribbean Airlines Boeing 737
-
Nest with two eggs in San Jose, California
-
Female ruby-throated hummingbird perched in Hudson, Ohio
-
Hummingbird feeding from a flower in the University of California Botanical Garden
-
Hummingbird with yellow pollen on its beak in the University of California Botanical Garden
-
Juvenile Anna's hummingbird with tongue sticking out
-
Calypte anna perched
-
Hummingbird chicks in a nest in a cactus in Mesa, Arizona
-
Hummingbird adult in its nest in a cactus in Mesa, Arizona
-
A female Anna's hummingbird perched on a small branch
.jpg)
See also
In Spanish: Colibríes para niños
