Back when my sister came to visit and we did our landscaping project, we put up 2 bird feeders amidst our rock garden. They were primarily for decoration because I didn’t want to have to deal with cleaning up fallen seeds. One of the feeders is for hummingbirds and a few weeks ago, we saw a few hummers buzz by looking to eat. So, soon after, the boys and I made a batch of hummingbird nectar (- 1 cup sugar dissolved in 4 cups boiling water and cool overnight), we filled the feeder and waited. It didn’t take long! Hummers have been coming nearly every day since.
They are all ruby-throated hummingbirds, the most common on this side of America:
beautiful male looking at me
female flying on top and male on lower left
drinking nectar!
– they can hover perfectly still in the air by flapping their wings in repeated figure eights, much like a swimmer treading water
– their brilliant color comes from iridescence, not only pigment, so they can flash their colors or hide them by manipulating their movement contingent to light source…useful for picking up the ladies
– 30% of their weight is flight muscle
– their hearts can beat up to 1,260 beats per minute
– their tiny brains are proportionately the largest in the bird kingdom
– to stay warm/conserve energy, at night they are able to go into “torpor”, a metabolic rate that is 1/15th that of sleep
– the smallest bird in the world is a bee hummingbird – it weighs 1.8 grams and stands 5 cm tall
God never ceases to amaze me! The more I see and learn about the things of nature, the more I appreciate the One who designed and brought them into existence…just for us! In my humble opinion, I think everyone with a lawn should get a hummingbird feeder or two. Totally worth it.