Posted on 05/31/2016 12:38:20 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Sometimes it’s surprising to discover how little we know about common plants or animals. Consider the ruby-throated hummingbird. If you live in the eastern half of Canada or the United States and have spotted a hummingbird hovering around a feeder in the backyard in summer, this is the bird you saw. But while scientists have documented many of the feeding and mating behaviors of the birds and that the birds migrate south to Central America and Cuba, there are still plenty of mysteries, such as whether the birds go the long way through Mexico when they migrate or whether they take a shortcut across the Gulf of Mexico.
It turns out that the tiny birds, some of which are small enough to fit in your hand, could easily take the shortcut, even though they’d get no break on the journey. Based on analyses of wing shape, body size and fat reserves, some of these tiny birds could fly more than 2,000 kilometers in the right winds. That’s more than enough to get them the 1,000 kilometers across the Gulf, researchers report March 9 in The Auk.
Theodore Zenzal Jr. and Frank Moore of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg studied ruby-throated hummingbirds at the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge in Alabama, one of the birds’ stopovers on their journey south. From 2010 to 2014, they captured birds in the refuge during late summer and early fall. Birds were weighed, measured, banded and released.
Zenzal and Moore found that older birds tended to arrive at the refuge earlier and stayed for shorter times than younger birds. They also had more fat that could fuel a long voyage, and older males had the most. Based on these fuel loads, the birds could fly for another 2,260 kilometers on average without stopping for food, the team calculates.
That was just the average, though. Some very skinny birds arrived at the refuge, and had enough fat for just a short trip of less than 20 kilometers. This may explain why some hummingbirds stuck around in the refuge for a couple of weeks — they may have needed to bulk up before taking off again. Other birds had plenty of fat, though, enough to go more than 4,000 kilometers.
Hummingbirds’ small size may actually be an advantage when it comes to long-distance flight, the researchers note. These birds are really good at taking in a lot of fuel, and being small means that they can carry a larger percentage of their body weight as fat than can larger birds.
But just because the hummingbirds may be capable of taking the shortcut across the water doesn’t mean they actually do. Weather patterns aren’t favorable for such a flight until late fall, Zenzal and Moore say. So it may make more sense, especially for juveniles, to take the long way around since there are opportunities for pit stops should they be needed.
We have hummingbirds around here... they are incredibly cool to watch in action.
And use SPRING WATER or purified water NOT TAP WATER!!
Hummingbirds are beautiful in everything they do. Another reason I believe in a Creator.
They have good memories also.
Every spring around mid-April I will see them just hovering, staring at the hooks I hang my feeders from.
My college grad CPA is bugophobic. The sight of a wasp or other bugs causes her to freak out to the point of almost hurting herself to get away. Last spring she came running in the house screaming, “ OMG, there is a HUGE wasp on the front porch”. So I went to investigate. It was a hummingbird buzzing her for getting too close to the feeder!!!
College kids, oh brother....
I’m watching 4 fight over my feeder right now. It seems like the females outnumber the male’s about 5 to 1.
I’m on the west side in the Cascade foothills in Washington St. close to I 90. The’re like little jet fighters that can stop on a dime and even fly backwards on the same dime.
I love hearing them fuss with each other over the feeders.
The perfection and beauty of hummingbirds seems almost of another world.
Beautiful birds. Very curious (they actually seem “friendly” and territorial.
Because of fluoride or minerals? I have a private well here.
No flouride but, it’s probably pretty hard water.
We only saw our first hummer this past Saturday (we’re in the suburbs just NE of Washington, DC); our feeders have been up for a month, and we usually see them much sooner. I was getting worried - but they’re back!
-JT
I am going to fill a feeder with RED BULL and watch as they disappear from going so fast they travel backwards or forwards through time. /s
My husband is a hummingbird freak also. I do mix a bit more sugar than called for, probably 2 1/2 cups to 7 cups of water and one cup of ice to cool it down.
I have a well, is that water okay?
I have orioles at the feeders all spring and most of the summer and house finches as long as the feeders are out.
The hummingbirds have been coming in since the first of May, one or two at a time. They come in skinny, stay a day or two until they are fat and are off again.
I think they are black chinned hummers, they look black/dark at the feeder although one came through with a red head.
We have a tiny hummingbird nest in the bougevvilla in our patio. The mother is working on her second set of babies now.
The key to hummingbird food is making sure the sugar and water are mixed REALLY well. I probably stir my recipe up to 300 times. No joke.
The idea that these tiny birds can fly over 1000 km (600+ miles) without feeding just amazes me.
I’ve got two hummer nests in my backyard right now. Two newly hatched chicks in one, the other is already done for this season.
rlmorel said that hummers are ‘friendly but territorial’. ‘Fearless and extremely territorial’ is more my experience. They have the personality of an angry chihuahua crossed with a pitbull if they are annoyed with your presence in their territory. Hummingbirds are the only bird that I know what can cuss, other than parrots.
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