Category Archives: Hummingbirds

Lawful Little Migrants

Hummingbirds

In South America the Andes mountains provide great habitat for numerous hummingbirds. In fact, as David Attenborough remarked, “half of all humming birds live in these mountains along with their plant partners.”

 

The Ruby-throated Hummingbird, which is the only one to live in Manitoba, needs to make sure that it leaves the north before its plants stop producing nectar for the winter. If it fails to do that right it will starve.  When the time comes, they begin their incredible migration to the south. When they arrive in places like Rockport Texas they load up with food where they can get it. Many people place feeders for them on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Each of the humming birds must convert sugar from its source such as nectar, into fat for the long migration over the gulf which has very few islands for resting on the flight.  Most fly non-stop across the Great Bay that some idiots call the Gulf of America.

According to David Attenborough, “in just 3 days the average hummingbird will nearly double its weight. This is the equivalent of a human of average weight putting on over 50 kg of fat in 3 days.” As Attenborough said, “During the peak of migration Rockport is home to tens of thousands of hummers. This spectacle of so many hummers can be found nowhere else on earth.” Needless to say, it attracts bird enthusiasts from around North America. Those are the real bird brains.

 

The crossing of the Gulf of Mexico is the greatest test of the flying skill of the hummingbirds. They make their journey at night and fly at least 800 km non-stop. That is an enormous task for such a little bird. No one really knows how they can do it. But they do it.

I love this photo because it shows the long tongue of these birds which are used to suck out nectar from flowers with long nectar chambers.

 

David Attenborough summed up hummingbirds like this:

 

“There is much we do not know about humming birds and their secret high-speed lives, but what we do know is that they are the most remarkable, colourful, energetic and acrobatic of all creatures. They live at the limits of what is possible. Nature’s miniature masterpieces and all because they are the messengers of plants.”

 

 

We are fortunate to be blessed with hummingbirds. Life would be so much duller without them.

 

At the Edge of what is possible

Hummingbirds

 

 

 

It is abundantly clear that hummingbirds have an abundance of skills, some of them spectacular. As a result of all of exercising these skills they require a lot of energy. Their flights are often like aerial pilots with their dogfights.

As  David Attenborough in his film explained this:

 

“When flying, hummingbirds have the highest oxygen demands of all vertebrates. Their wings beat as fast as 80 times a second. The problems is getting all that oxygen to the proper place. When the bird is perched its heart beats at around 400 times per minute. In flight it rises to an astonishing 1,200 beats per minute [20 times per second] as the heart pumps oxygen rich blood to the wing muscles. Even this is not enough for hovering, so the heart expands in size so it can pump more blood with each beat. When this happens, the blood circulates around the whole body. Heart to lung, heart to muscles, and back to the heart in under 1 second! They are living at the edge of what is possible. Extreme aerial athletes with extreme needs. It’s no surprise that when they are not flying and feeding, they rest and conserve energy.”

That really is astounding. As a result of all of this, hummingbirds spend 80% of their day perched. That is why I sometimes have such a hard time finding them, as they perch often inside tree branches where it is so dark and difficult to photograph them. During this time, they stretch muscles and groom their very important feathers. They also take advantage of rains to clean their feathers. Unlike insects they really seem to flourish in the rain. I noticed this from inside my cottage this summer when I was watching hummingbirds in the rain.

 

The hummingbirds also as a result need to protect their sources of nectar. In the forests of South American for example, they must protect their flowers from nectar thieves. That is why they have evolved to drive out competitors. Like all good capitalists they are habituated to destroy the competition. It is in their nature.

 

As a result of all of these high energy needs, hummingbirds must feed every 15 minutes or more. “Starvation and even death is always only hours away,” Attenborough reported. As a result, they don’t have time to visit flowers that have no nectar. They don’t really have time to chase competitors to away either, but I can report they do. This begs the question, what do they do in the dark?

 

Staying alive until morning is a challenge for every hummingbird. They do that by going into torpor every night of their lives. This is similar to hibernation. It is like going into hibernation every night! Their heart rate drops precipitously and their heart rate goes down from 400 to 40 beats per minute. That is 1% of the energy they use when flying!  This is a radical solution, because while they are in torpor they can’t move and are easy prey for predators that are out and about where they are. They can’t escape from nocturnal predators that find them. If a predator finds them at night, they are dead meat. When day breaks, they shiver and in about half a hour can fly again. It is a remarkable transformation for these truly remarkable birds.

 

To feed themselves sufficiently hummingbirds must be smart, except when it comes for rivals at least.  Then they can be stupid. Competing when it is not necessary to compete. Reminds me of humans.

 

They must learn to avoid flowers that don’t produce nectar or not enough or are temporarily drained. As a result, they learn to avoid flowers they have already drained of nectar until they are replenished. They must have mental timers in their brains and be able to remember flowers already visited recently in trees or flower patches among enormous numbers of virtually identically coloured flowers. So Hummingbirds are indeed smart. That is why Attenborough said it was “a great feat for a bird brain.”

Hummingbirds can’t live on nectar alone. That is why they have learned to catch prey such as flying insects as well, which of course requires incredible aerial dexterity. They particularly need protein to replace feathers and build muscles.

 

Hummingbird Plant Partnership

Hummingbirds, Nature

 

It is interesting that hummingbirds are not found outside the western hemisphere except with the assistance of humans who help them to visit there. Some have been carried to Africa by humans. Most of them live in South America, but we found many in Arizona the years we lived there in winters, before the United States declared economic war on us here in Canada.

Manitoba only has one native humming bird, the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris), but it is gorgeous. The males are particularly gorgeous of course.

 

That is also why so many hummingbirds have such flamboyant displays of colourful feathers that are designed to scare their foes. Some of their feathers are what Attenborough called “extravagantly iridescent.” Those extravagant colours are not produced by pigments, but rather by layers of  air bubbles in the feathers. Attenborough described this as follows: “Those air bubbles refract, reflect, and recombine sunlight to produce dazzling colours. The colours depend on the angle of the sunlight, so hummingbirds can turn on and off their brilliant signal, flashing a warning to an intruder, or hide from an enemy.” That is why one can never be sure that a dull hummingbird is nonetheless a male with its gorget feather not reflecting well because of the angle to the sun

 

Hummingbirds are not unusual in the sense that like so many other birds, they look to flowers for their food in return for agreeing (or not) to carry the flowers pollen from one flower to another. It is an example of a free trade agreement. As a result, as Attenborough said, “nectar fuels their frenetic movement.”

 

Nowadays a lot of flowers use birds as carriers, but this was not the original inters-species agreement. When flowers first evolved, over 60 million years ago there were no hummingbirds. The first flowering plants depended on insects to carry their valuable cargo, but in South America the mornings are often cool and damp, and insects are cold-blooded so are often lethargic at such times. Flowers could use better, more reliable, messengers, so they looked to birds. The original bargain was one between plants and animals such as butterflies. Butterflies carry the pollen from one flower to another and hence fertilized flowers they encountered. Insects are then fed with nectar. A fair deal. Some flowers cheated however. For example, some orchids deliver no food to the insects, but only sweet smells. They promise nectar to the birds but don’t actually give it up.

 

Hummingbirds in South America, and now Manitoba, are able to fly in all weather conditions, at least in summer. Thus, they can carry pollen more reliably than butterflies.

 

As David Attenborough said in his film, The Secret Life of Birds, “the plant and insect have been in a long and successful arrangement, but at some point, some plants dropped their insect messengers.” Birds like hummingbirds provided a safer pair of wings as far as the flowers were concerned. This first new deal probably happened about 50 million years ago according to Attenborough. Hummingbirds were ideal partners.

 

Birds at first probably were attracted to the insects on birds as a source of tasty food. But some hummingbirds could also drink the nectar inside the flowers. The first hummingbirds were larger and clumsier than the modern hummingbirds. They learned better in millions of years they related. Evolution in time—long time—provided smaller birds that were better flyers. As Attenborough said, “the bird evolved to better suit their new way of life.”  That’s how evolution works. “Over millions of years birds’ bills to be evolved thinner and lighter all the  better to scour for nectar,” as Attenborough said. The birds also became more agile than their ancestors. They had to learn to hover in order to insert their bills into the flowers. They also evolved long tongues to probe the flowers and sip the nectar.  These tongues are visible on some of my photos.

 

The hummingbirds also had to reduce their weight and did not have any Ozempic pills to help them. So their legs got lighter, thinner, and smaller. As a result they could no longer hop. As Attenborough said, “Hummingbirds live on an energy life edge”.

 

 

Today over 8,000 different plants depend on birds for pollination. Of course, there was a problem.  Insects are cold-blooded unlike birds. As a result, birds require a lot more energy than the insects. In fact, often they need 10 times as much energy than the insects they replaced. According to Attenborough, “a hummingbird eats more than its weight in nectar each day.”  So flowers have to produce a lot of nectar to keep those birds coming. No nectar; no birds.

A lot of flowers that are attractive to hummingbirds are red or orange.  Bees are red-green color blind. To make their flowers less attractive to insects, some of the flowers evolved to have long thin flowers which the birds could find and insert their long slim bills into. Hummingbirds can hover, which is needed to get inside those flowers, but that costs the birds a lot of energy. They are the only birds that can hover well enough to hold their bills in place to extract nectar. Hummingbirds are formed to give them lift and power on the downstroke as well as the upstroke, unlike other birds.

 

Hummingbirds are unique among birds because they are able to fly backwards. They can also rotate on the spot. They can even fly upside down. As Attenborough said, “Plants with their hard to reach flowers have produced the ultimate aerial acrobats.” It really is the plant that creates the animal, and the animal creates the plant. It’s called coevolution. The entire world is connected that way. And it’s all amazing.

 

 

 

 

Celebrities of the Bird World

Birds, Hummingbirds

 

 

 

 

David Attenborough in his film about the Hummingbirds, The Secret Lives of Hummingbirds said, “They are the celebrities, the stars of the bird world.” I agree with this. Who can outshine hummingbirds?

This summer Christiane and I have been spending a lot of time on our deck at the lake watching hummingbirds. We put out feeders filled with sugar water—1 part sugar for every part water—and wait for the birds to come to us. We pull out binoculars on the little table between us and are entertained for hours. We can sit there reading and watching. The entertainment is astounding. Every few minutes another hummer comes by or is chased by one of his cantankerous colleagues.

 

Humming birds do not play well with others.  They cannot abide a competitor no matter how much abundance in feed.  They will spend enormous energy flying after foes to make it clear to the others that this is their territory and no one else’s.

It is strange that they are so territorial. In the forests of south America that is necessary. They must fend off competitors for food. In the front yard of our cabin at the lake they waste their time and energy chasing rivals away from their food source—my feeders. Perhaps in millions of years they will adapt and change if some people continue to support them with supplies of sugary nectar substitution

This was one of the rare males I saw this year. Are the males dying out? Teh gorget was more orange than red.

I have been trying to catch them in flight with my camera and my big lens, and that is an incredible challenge.  They rarely stay long in one place.  But again, the fun is in the chase. They are so fast they fly by in a blur.  But modern high-speed cameras can slow them down when 1 second becomes 15 seconds.  When you slow them down you can look into their secret world.

The Secret Life of Hummingbirds

Birds, Hummingbirds

Lately I have been spending a crazy amount of time following and luring hummingbirds.  I want to capture them. Not literally, but virtually, with my camera.  It is great sport. It would be much easier to shoot them with a rifle. But this is more fun. Great fun in fact.  People often say the fun is in the chase. And I agree with that.

 

I recently watched a video narrated by David Attenborough, one of the finest nature narrators and interpreters.  The video is called The Secret Lives of Hummingbirds. He said that “hummingbirds are amongst the most spectacular of animals on earth.”  I agree with this as well.

Hummingbirds are very small birds. Among the smallest warm-blooded animals on earth, according to Attenborough.

 

He also “their glittering colours and prowess in the air are unmatched.”   Many birds have gorgeous colours, including hummingbirds, but their flying skills are astonishing.

 

 

 

Meandering into and out of Danger

Hummingbirds, Natural History, Nature

 

When Christiane finished breakfast and stepped outside our cottage at Buffalo Point this past week, she remarked, “This is what heaven should look like.” Sometimes she is very wise.

This day we woke up to a glorious day. Nothing special about that at the lake, but it sure was great.  First, the Hummingbirds were going crazy. They were chasing each other madly. That is what they do. Around humming bird feeders they spend much more time chasing each other away from the feeders than they do feeding. Even though they had 4 feeding troughs that could easily be shared, they would rather waste time and energy chasing competitors  away from what they want to hoard. Of course, as soon as the two hummingbirds flee, another flies to the feeder to take advantage of what the foolish birds left behind undefended.  And these were female birds, presumably the smarter sex. The males had already flown to warmer climates, it seemed.

When you think about it, hummingbirds are about as stupid as humans, who also spend a lot of time and energy defending their territory from perceived threats.  Isn’t that what gated communities are all about? Well, hummingbirds are probably not quite as stupid  as humans.

I spent much of the date sitting on the deck in the shade reading a fantastic book, The People v. Democracy by Yascha Mounk. I was drinking hot apple cider, chatting occasionally with my lovely wife Christiane, looking at the lake, watching the crazy birds and enjoying life as good as it get. In any event the day was deeply pleasant.

Near the end of the afternoon, I was sitting alone on the deck, when I was very surprised.  I looked up and saw a black bear walking right by mean on our front yard. He took only quizzical look at me and gave me a pass.  He was not interested in me. I was happy about that. Perhaps he did not see me as very tasty. That would not be surprising.

I have never been as close as that to a black bear. I doubt that it was 10 yards away. Even  closer.  I was holding a camera with a big zoom lens, to photograph tiny hummingbirds, so I had to turn it as far down as possible to get the big bear into focus. After dismissing me, the bear continued meandering towards a bird feeder filled with luscious sunflower seeds. He gave them a sniff but passed on them too. Why? I am not sure but I have a theory.

Black bears have thrived in North America since the arrival of white visitors. Grizzly bears and Polar bears not so much. Why is that?  My theory is that black bears are smart. They have figured out that humans are trouble.  They know we are dangerous.  Even though I was an old man who would have been defenceless to any attack, and I had nowhere to escape,  the bear ambled on.  Somehow it knew that if it mauled me the bear would get in trouble. More trouble than it wanted. There is food around that it is much safer to sample. And probably more tasty too.

 

Hummingbirds are Magical

Birds, Hummingbirds, Nature

The American PBS show Nature once had a special on Hummingibrds.   It was indeed special because the subject of the show, hummingbirds are really special. Hummingbirds truly are “a magical work of nature.” Science and technology have struggled to keep up with them. Some modern movie cameras have revealed amazing things about their flight.

Hummingbirds have not stopped evolving. They are like no other birds on earth. Or better yet, hummingbirds are like no other birds in the sky.

“The more we learn, the more fascinating they are.” It has been a great summer. So far.

 

Migration

Hummingbirds

 

The ruby-throated hummingbirds, which we saw at the English Country Garden, were likely preparing for it migration. In fact, we did not see the red throats. That is not unusual. The red is only visible when the light is just right. Added to that, only the males have the gorgeous red throats and I have heard that males start migration before the females. They might be out of the province all ready.  They don’t require health insurance. When conditions are right, they take off. Can anyone blame them?

 

Some of the ruby-throated hummingbirds migrate over the Gulf of Mexico enroute to South America. As result, they will load up seriously on nutrients before their long flight. During this process, that takes about 2 weeks, the hummingbird will double its body weight.  Across the Gulf of Mexico on the way to South America they are not able to stop. Stopping means death.

 

There basically are very few islands in the Gulf. As a result, they usually embark on a 500-mile non-stop flight that takes about 20 hours and during this time the bird loses 70% of its body weight in less than a day!

 

The hummers I saw at Assiniboine Park were no doubt getting ready to migrate down south. Their migrations are so astonishing that many continue to think that they hitch rides on the bodies of geese. Personally, I think that is a conspiracy theory. Others claim they ride on cruise ships.

 

After all, how could such a tiny bird fly non-stop across the Gulf of Mexico?  Yet they do it; somehow, as the shoe company says, they “just do it”. Some of them actually follow the coast, taking a longer but safer route. Across the Gulf if the bird encounters a head wind it can die. Headwinds can be deadly. No one said the life of a hummingbird is easy? They also don’t fly in formation to make it easier, as geese do. They migrate alone. That is one lonely and tough flight. It makes even an Air Canada flights look good.

 

Some of them actually follow the coast, taking a longer but safer route. Across the Gulf if the bird encounters a head wind it can die. Who said the Life of a hummingbird is easy? They don’t fly in formation to make it easier. They migrate alone.

 

For many reasons, humans are enamored of hummingbirds.  Who could blame us? As Charles Bowden who frequently wrote for Arizona Highways magazine,  explained,

 

We are all seduced by hummingbirds, by the flash of color, the sudden iridescence, the rapid movement, the hovering, and the fact that something so small will fly right up to our face. In a world where so much of the wild flees at our approach, hummingbirds seem to promise redemption, whatever the real reason for their behavior.

 

According to Susan Wethington, “Hummingbirds are one of the few animals people connect with immediately, and every culture with hummingbirds has a positive connection. I think hummingbirds provide an opportunity to engage people in nature and open eyes to the natural world. And quite frankly, if we can’t save hummingbirds, what group of animals can we save?” ]

 

Bowden was right when he said, “If you want to see the only future worth being part of, you join the world of hummingbirds.” [3] It really does make sense to “protect the joy.” Personally, I don’t want to be a part of a world without hummingbirds.  How about you?

 

 

Some hummingbirds don’t migrate.  The Anna’s hummingbirds live year round in Arizona. Who could blame them for staying? Why do the others leave? Others like the Ruby-throated and Rufous-sided hummingbird migrate amazing distances. Before migrating, hummingbirds have to stock up on a lot of calories. They become “eating machines,” according to Krebbs. They need fat, fat, and more fat to cross the Gulf of Mexico for example, as some ruby-throats traverse that huge bay, it takes about 2 grams of fat for a hummingbird to travel 600 miles. Remember, hummingbirds don’t weigh much more than 2 grams. I gram is equal to 9 calories. They burn from .69 to .74 calories per hour.  About 2 grams of fat are needed to cross the Gulf of Mexico. That is why hummingbirds have to nearly double their weight before they embark on this incredible flight.  That means hummingbirds consume a piddly 18 calories to cross the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The ruby-throated hummingbird, which is the most common hummingbird in Manitoba, and the only one I have seen here, is an amazing migrant. It spends its winters in South America and therefore the poor ruby-throated hummingbird has to make an epic journey twice each year. This is the longest migration of any bird in comparison to the size of the bird (except see Rufous). The tiny bird must fly a mighty marathon to cross the Gulf of Mexico in a steady flight of 18 hours across 500 miles of open water. All of this is done without stopping. Stopping would be fatal. So it cannot drink or feed while it crosses the Gulf.

The long and short of it—especially short—is that hummingbirds are amazing creatures.