Dear Kid,

Hummingbirds are Mother Nature’s tiny little helicopter birds. They spend their days zooming around from flowers and hummingbird feeders and avoiding been seen by certain people (not naming names–you know who you are).

Despite their small size, hummingbirds are one of the most aggressive bird species. They will regularly attack jays, crows and hawks that infringe on their territory. Backyard birders often have one dominant hummingbird that guards all the feeders, chasing intruders away.

They are the smallest birds in the world (and in the galaxy as far as I can tell), but for their size they have the largest hearts and brains of all animals. Don’t try to train a hummingbird–they spend all that brain power searching for food (kind of like the Puppy).

Unlike the Puppy, they have no sense of smell, which makes it amazing that they visit between 2,000 to 5,000 flowers a day. But they have to visit that many mini-restaurants because they eat twice their weight each day. They do not suck nectar through their long bills, they lick it with tiny fringed forked tongues. That is a lot of eating. They also eat an occasional insect for protein.

The do all this eating because they work hard. They beat their wings up to 60 times–per second. Per second. This is Olympic rate my friend. And their teeny weeny little hearts beat between 500 and 1,200 times per minute. You’d eat a lot if your body worked that hard.

I’m trying to convince my metabolism to pay attention.

Hummingbirds cannot walk, they can only perch (tiny feet are useful for efficient flying). They are the only birds capable of flying backward. When they fly forward, their average speed is 45 miles per hour.
The ruby-throated hummingbird flies 500 miles nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico during the spring and fall migrations. Personally, I think they should consider a cruise, but none of them asked me.

Many hummingbird species can breed together to create hybrid species. This is one factor that makes identifying hummingbirds very challenging.

Love, Mom