By accepting you will be accessing a service provided by a third-party external to https://www.echoactive.com/

Hummingbird

Sword Billed Hummingbird by Bogota Birding ©2019

Hummingbirds are some of evolution's most amazing creations, with 338 known species that span the Americas. They range in size from the bee hummingbird, with a weight of just 2g and measuring 5cm long, to the giant hummingbird, weighing up to 24g. These spectacularly colourful creatures seem to inhabit a different time dimension to us, and operate at incredible speeds. 

"Hummers" can flap their wings at up to 80 times per second, fly at over 50km/hr and dive at almost 80km/hr. They need to be quick, light and agile to evade predators and are the only bird that can fly backwards. Their need to keep body fat to an absolute minimum, combined with their high metabolisms means that they also need to drink nectar almost all day long. While drinking, their tongues dart in and out, pumping nectar into their mouths over 15 times per second. Unusually for animals with such high metabolisms, they can live for up to 10 years.

The clip below features the bee hummingbird, the smallest bird on Earth:

Featuring photos by South America's hummingbird specialists: bogotabirding.com

FOLLOWERS

POSTS
Pinned Items
Recent Activities
No posts yet

View More Posts

 

YOU MAY LIKE

Incredibly diverse, colourful, endlessly fascinating, and cute and squelchy, frogs are sad...
Hummingbirds are some of evolution's most amazing creations, with 338 known species that s...
Riding for the Great Forest is an open ended grass roots cycling campaign, highlighting th...
The Yellow-bellied Glider lives along the East coast of Australia, from Northern Queenslan...

YOU MAY LIKE

​Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, is a highly controversial method of obtaining h...
Rewilding is large-scale conservation aimed at restoring and protecting natural processes ...
The Great Forest National Park is a proposed park in Victoria's Central Highlands, North E...
Share some plant!...

FOLLOWERS

Recommended

We present photos from our visits to 58 national parks in South- and South-Western Europe....
The Powerful Owl, Ninox Strenua, is Australia's largest owl. It lives mainly in tall, humi...
Incredible marvels of evolution, these birds astound with their beauty, complexity an...
A film about Permaculture, Gaia, Climate Change and Peak Oil...

Search our maps