Bird-Center.net

Hummingbird Flowers

by Adam Fulford, Bird-Center.net

Imagine looking out your window and seeing colorful little hummingbirds hovering and zipping forwards, sideways and backwards like little fairies as they sip nectar from bright flowers in your garden.

Hummingbirds like to sip nectar juice from special flowers all their own. Hummingbird flowers usually don’t have much aroma. They find flowers by the way they look, not the way they smell. The colors of flowers that Hummingbirds like can’t be seen by most bugs but hummingbirds can see them very clearly and from very far away — even a half mile away!

How to Recognize Hummingbirds Flowers

Most hummingbird flowers hang downwards, like bells. Examples of hummingbird flowers include coral honeysuckles, shrimp plants, cardinal climbers, cardinal flowers, Texas sages, petunias, impatiens, autumn sages, anise-scented sages, and bee balms.

How Hummingbirds Pollinate Flowers

When a hummingbird hovers around a flower and sticks its beak into it to feed on nectar, pollen will dirty its little chin and forehead. Some of the pollen on the hummingbird’s dirty little face will rub off on the next flower that the hummingbird feeds on. This helps the flowers. Pollen fertilizes eggs inside the flower, so the flower can produce fruit with seeds that can grow into new plants.

Just to Survive, Hummingbirds Have To Eat Several Times Their Own Weight in Nectar Every Day

The way Hummingbirds fly, fluttering their wings so rapidly that they vibrate and hum, requires lots and lots of energy which they get from sipping nectar from lots and lots of flowers.

To provide them with a constant supply of all the energy they, you’ll want plants that bloom flowers in spring, plants that flower in the summer, and other plants that flower in the fall. In warmer places, a garden can bloom flowers all year round!

Their energy consumption is so high that at times – on long, cold nights, for instance – they even go into a state of torpor to stretch out their energy reserves so they won’t starve to death. Although not all North America’s hummingbirds travel as far as the Ruby-throat, they also require extra “fuel” reserves to make their migration flights possible.

Hummingbirds Travel Far and Wide

Ruby-throats hummingbirds add more than 50% to their weight in preparation for their flight and then begin their long migration, not from the coast, as you might expect, but from well inland in Florida or Georgia, ending their trip well inside Mexico.

How Fast Do Hummingbirds Fly?

Hummingbirds have been timed in wind tunnels at a maximum speed of 43 kph (27 mph), and although their speed across the Gulf is unknown, even a speed in excess of 43 kph would require more than 20 hours of non-stop flying! On the return trip north, Ruby-throats arrive in the southern U.S. by March or early April. By mid-May, the northern-most populations have arrived in Canada.

Hummingbird Diet

Hummingbirds “drink” nectar, a good source of carbohydrates, but they eat a fair number of invertebrates too. The insects and spiders they catch as they visit flowers provide protein, an important part of their diet. But, like marathon runners, they spend their last days before migration “carbo-loading” – stocking up on the carbohydrates that offer quick fuel for a long trip.