Interesting Facts about Hummingbirds

The lady in these pictures is Abigail Alfano, and she lives in Pine, Louisiana (North of New Orleans).  What is interesting is that she lives in a Hummingbird fly zone.  As the birds migrate they
land in her garden.  She took a little red dish and filled it with a sugar solution and here is what happened:

It is in
the month of September that these
Hummingbirds are on the move, and they need sugar to give them the energy to complete the migration.  Normally, they would feed from the nectar of plants, but clearly they prefer the more concentrated sugar solution
that Abigail provides for them.

Will and Guy love
the Hummingbird’s red throats.

It is the wings that give the ‘Humming bird’ its
name.  As hummingbirds go, this is quite a large species, nevertheless, even these can eat their own body weight in nectar in a day.

The Story Behind the Hummingbirds Story

The story-behind-the-story is that someone in Kentucky falsely passed the photographs off as their own.  When the impostor won first prize, Abigail and her
husband, who really took the photos, published
the full story; it is her hands in the picture and not the impostor’s.  These photographs were take in 2006, Will and Guy hope that Abigail has had just as much pleasure from the Hummingbird fly zone in 2007.

Here is Abigail to Prove it was Her Hummingbird Story

Interesting Facts About Hummingbirds

• As you suspected, the hummingbird is the smallest bird.  The honour
  of the world’s smallest bird falls to the bee hummingbird.  They are
  consistently less than 3 inches or 7 cm.   One side effect of this
  extreme adaptation is they have the highest percentage of brain and muscle
  of any bird.
• Hummingbirds beat their wings 1,000 times a minute.  What is even
  more amazing is that their flight control.  When hovering they can fly
  backwards, as well as up or down.  The secret of these flight patterns
  is their ability to rotate their wings in a circle.
• The hummingbirds’ tongue is modified to suck their fuel nectar from
  their chosen species of flower.  Nectar is almost 100% sugar; to get
  protein hummingbirds eat the odd spider or other insects.
• What’s interesting is the flower’s relationship with the hummingbird.
  Without the intervention of the hummingbird, many flowers could not
  pollinate.  From the flower’s point of view producing nectar is the
  bribe necessary for cross-pollination, without which flower species can and
  do become extinct.
• At night hummingbirds conserve energy by going into suspended animation,
  a state where they only consume 1/10 of the calories used when foraging.

Footnote:
Please send us your interesting facts about hummingbirds