Sidebar by Lynda La Rocca
Wildlife – June 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
The iridescent, jewel-toned hummingbird is North America’s smallest bird; many species are less than four inches in length. But size, as Napoleon might have pointed out, isn’t everything.
Despite their diminutive stature, hummers — particularly the males — are extremely pugnacious creatures who seem to expend more time and energy defending their feeders than they actually do feeding. You don’t even have to watch hummers to know when a territorial battle is raging. Just listen for the chattering chase notes emitted to drive away intruders.
Hummingbirds are the avian equivalent of perpetual motion machines, hovering, soaring, diving, flying backwards, and turning mid-air somersaults. Even when not actively seeking a meal of flower nectar or human-provided sugar water (both of which are consumed for calories; hummers also eat spiders and small insects to obtain protein), the heads of perched hummingbirds swivel like manic metronomes.
Flying or hovering hummingbirds beat their wings an astounding 22-79 times per second, according to the book, Watchable Birds of the Rocky Mountains.
And that’s not the only hummingbird body part in overdrive. The heart of a hovering hummer beats 1,200 times a minute, a rate that drops by only about half in a resting bird.
A 170-pound human male would need to consume 155,000 calories a day to match the hummer’s frenetic pace. And that would take a lot of sugar — and spiders.