Hummingbirds! Hummingbirds
are amazing birds. They are the only
birds that fly backwards. This comes in
handy when they fight over the bird feeder.
They can fly up, down, backwards, forwards, left, right, and they can
hover without a second thought.
They’re called humming birds for obvious reasons but if
anyone who’s reading this blog hasn’t seen a hummingbird then I’ll
explain. They beat their wings about 70
times a second which leads to 4,200 times a minute. This makes a soft whirring noise and their
wings ‘hum’! But hummingbirds vary in
size so the bigger the hummer, the less they beat.
Of course, all this beating of the wings takes energy, so you
can imagine how much these small birds need to eat. They can eat up to eight times their body
weight in one day. They also must eat every
5 minutes or they’ll starve to death.
This means that bird feeders are much enjoyed. But if you do put up a hummingbird feeder
don’t dye the sugar water red! It’s
really bad for the little hummers and anyway, the feeder should have colorful
flowers as the places where the ‘nectar’ comes out, so red water won’t attract
them any more than clear.
And expect a lot of fighting among the hummingbirds because
that’s just the way they are. The
smaller the animal, the more aggressive they get. This works with dogs and horses as well. Don’t worry that the hummingbirds will hurt
each other, because the only weapon they have is their aggressiveness… and
sometimes they get close enough together so that their wings beat together, but
that’s nothing. It only sounds bad.
There are 356 types of hummingbirds found. And the hummers are only found in North and
South America, so I always try not to become used to their awesomeness. I have a bird feeder outside of my house and
the little hummers are almost always coming and going. My brother says that they remind him of me –
in the aggressiveness he means.
