& a 9 i Gin Outdoors TheReview Wednesday, May 9,1990 — AI1 Amazing facis about the hummingbird I suspect that there are very few readers of this column who have not seen a hummingbird. They are very exciting, highly active little birds that never fail to conjure up a host of questions. How can such tiny birds indulge in migrations which take them all the way from Mexico to Alaska? What are some of the secrets of their marvelous, dazzling ability to maneuver so swiftly in the air? If the adults feed almost exclu- sively upon nectar, how can the youngsters develop the bone, mus- cle and other tissues which they will require as adults? How many kinds are there and what is their world-wide distributions? How do they solve the problems of energy requirements? How big is the smallest species and why are some of them not even smaller? The some 300 species of hum- mingbirds evolved in the Western Hemisphere and failed to make the ocean crossing to the Old World. We in North and South America and associated islands have them all! What a piece of omithological good fortune! They most certainly originated in northern South America where the vast majority of them are still found. Hummingbirds vary in total length from the streamertail, at nine and a half inches, to the bee hummingbird at two and one- quarter inches. The latter weighs only 1/15 of an ounce so it would take about 240 of these bumble-bee-sized hummers to equal the weight of one pound of butter! The smallest bird in the world. Why are they not still smaller, why is there a limit? The smaller an animal gets, the larger the surface to volume ration and the more rapidly they lose heat to the environment. So, warm blooded animals like the pygmy shrew and bee hummer reach a limit at which they can barely process food rap- idly enough to maintain a suffi- ciently high temperature. Is it appropriate to suggest that a person with a small appetite ‘eats like a bird’? No, birds, because of their high metabolic rates, are voracious feeders. Small birds require more food per unit of body weight than big birds. An average-sized hum- mingbird requires 12 times as much food for its size than a pigeon does and 25 times as much as a chicken. The rufous hummingbird in our photo today may eat 100 per cent of its weight in food in a day, Can you imagine a 180 Ib. man con- suming 180 Ib. of steak, onions and spaghetti every day? Hummingbirds are superb fliers partly because of the fact that their flying muscles are tremendous, larger in proportion to their size and weight than in any other bird, and these muscles are attached toa deep, sturdy keel. Researchers have found that sev- eral species are capable of beating their wings at 200 beats per Cy Hampson Photo TIME TO PLAN YOUR VACATION? Travel Guides Maps Language Tapes Phrase Books Flags Atlases Nautical Charts second and heartbeats may exceed 1000 per minute (Hickman). As well, the attachment of the wing to the skeleton and associated mus- cles enables hummingbirds to fly in any direction, including sidew- ays, up or down, and even back- wards. They can also conserve energy by lowering the body tem- perature when at rest. A popular misconception is that the diet of hummingbirds consists almost entirely of nectar and sugar solutions. On the contrary, hum- mers consume great numbers of insects which provide essential protein for the development of the chicks, In the flooded flats of the upper Fraser, Mary and I found rufous hummingbirds gathering enor- mous numbers of mosquitoes which they regurgitated to their chicks at about 15-minute inter- vals. While it took us six years to find the first hummer nest in this wild region, that gave us the necessary clues to their nesting site prefer- ences. We were-later able to turn up no fewer than 13 of them in a single hour’s searching! PS. 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