DISQUS

Zoe Ann Hinds · 10 months ago

I thought the following information about hummingbirds might interest you and your readers. The smallest hummingbird is the bee hummingbird which only weighs a little less than two grams. The largest hummingbird is known as the giant hummingbird and it weighs between 21 and 23 grams. According to hummingbird expert Laura Erickson, you could mail nine or ten hummingbirds with a single stamp! This should help give you some idea just how extremely tiny hummingbirds are.

Female hummingbirds are larger then the males. Here's why. Female hummingbirds are solely responsible for the care and rearing of the young. Therefore, the females need to be a tiny bit bigger to be able to produce eggs, to afford to share their body heat with the eggs while incubating, and to be able to share their food when feeding nestlings. Male hummingbirds are the tiniest warm-blooded animals on the planet.

90 percent of the hummingbird’s diet consists of nectar from flowers or feeders. The hummingbird will eat between 5-8 times per hour for about 30 seconds at a time. They also eat insects and spiders which provides the protein necessary for their diet. When the hummingbird catches the insect, this is done using a process known as “hawking.” This is when the hummingbird flies and dives to capture the insect out of the air.