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11:46 p.m. - 2005-06-27
Hummingbirds! *new pic 4/8/06*
Greetings, all! I hope you have been having a relaxing and lovely June, as I have. Well, except for the first few days of it. During this early June excursion to WI, I had the pleasure of seeing my Aunt T's garden, and visiting with her son, J. While sitting on their lovely patio, we witnessed a hummingbird visiting their feeder!

A buzzy and tiny picture, from Isidor Jeklin:
Hummingbirds are so magical, don't you think? To me it is usually quite suprising to see one. Also they are hard to see! So I'm just going to write about the Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris), since they're common in the midwest and eastwards. The Rufous hummingbird is common throughout the US.

Hummingbirds are members of the family Trochilidae, which is Greek for "small bird". There are 338 species of hummingbirds, which occur only in the Western hemisphere!

These tiny birds prefer deciduous forests, gardens and parks. The deal-breaker for hummingbird real estate is of course, the existence of nectar-bearing plants! They will also eat small insects and spiders, and drink tree sap.

Side note: When Wendell was young, she once persuaded the mother of one of her friends to microwave some collected pine sap, in order to turn it into amber. It didn't work.

Females and juveniles have iridescent greenish backs and white chests, while adult males have the red gorget that provides the bird with its name. Males return from their first winter with the red spot in place.

Like shrews, hummingbirds are tiny and can potentially lose body heat too rapidly to survive. Many unique physical features allow the birds to eat often, hovering at nectar-rich flowers. I'd like to talk about the unique qualities of hummingbird anatomy, before discussing their life cycle.

These birds are really amazing. First of all, they weigh the same as a marshmallow! Hypothetically, you could put ten hummingbirds into an envelope and mail it with just one stamp! Hummingbird hearts make up 2.5% of their weight, making it the largest heart (when compared to body size) in the animal kingdom. The heart beats 250 times per minute while at rest, and 1,220 per minute while flying. Hummingbirds also have the largest concentration of oxygen carrying erythrocytes, or red blood cells.

The birds can also fall into a state of torpor (similar to my behavior of late in my sweltering apartment), which means their body temperature is 105 degrees during the day, and falls to 70 degrees at night.

Hummingbirds store energy in the form of fat in their livers; anywhere from 15 to 45% of their weight lies in this fat store, which increases as the autumn migration approaches.

Of course hummingbird skeletons are extremely lightweight. In addition, they (along with Swifts, which are related) have a ball and socket joint at the sternum, which allows the wing rotation necessary for backwards flight! Hovering is also a result. Most birds have white and red muscle fibers. White fibers are for sprint bursts of energy; red fibers are for sustained use. Hummingbirds only have red muscle fibers, probably because their usual mode is so fast.

Female ruby-throated hummingbirds are larger than males by 15 to 20%. This helps the females incubation abilities, while some scientists think the smaller males are better able to do mating dances.

Even the love organs of hummingbirds are adjusted for their small size and delicate weight! The testes and ovaries are only full-sized during mating season. In the female, the right ovary shrinks and only the left one is functional; the "back-up" is sacrificed for less flying weight. The males have no penis, but just a "cloacal preturberance" (A potential name for a rock band?) with which he touches the female's opening to fertilize her eggs.

During the spring, males return from their winter trip to Mexico and Central America. (No doubt stuffed with guacamole.) They return first to find good territory, and defend it. Then the ladies return, and the males engage in the mating dance, which involves flying up high, diving at top speed and pulling up at the last minute. The females make their choice and...the males hook up with others. There are fewer male hummingbirds than female so this works out.

The female makes a nest, which is six cm tall and four cm wide, made out of spiderwebs, plant matter, and covered with camoflauging lichen. . (Don't you want to see a hummingbird nest?!) She sits on her one to two eggs 55 min out of every hour, and after 14 to 20 days the babies hatch. They can't produce their own heat for the first few days of their life, so she has to do a balancing act between getting food and warming them.

After four to six weeks, the babies are fledged and ready to find food. Scientists believe that hummingbirds rely mostly on instinct. The part of the brain that responds to learning, well developed in parrots, for example, is very small in hummingbirds.

Aren't these interesting birds? I hope you'll think about their amazing features if you are lucky enough to see a hummingbird this summer! I will be hoping one will alight on my finger and allow me to pet it on its tiny little head!

Back off, it's my fantasy life!
Wendell


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