hummingbirds are ravenous. these tiniest of birds have the highest metabolism of any warm blooded animal. and they’re fueled by flower nectar. to get it, they’ve developed skills no otherbirds have. they can fly backwards and hover for longstretches of time. their beaks stay steady like a surgeon’s scalpel, but their wings beat furiously, up to 80 times a second. and they can hover in wind. in rain even. most of these birds weigh less than a nickel.
you’d think they’d get blown away. so how do they pull it off? scientists at uc berkeley brought hummingbirdsinto the lab for a closer view. first, the wild birds had to be trained, oneat a time, to feed from an artificial flower filled with sugar water. hummingbird wings buzz like helicopter blades- too fast for the naked eye to see. but by recording them with a high-speed camera– at 1000 frames a second -- scientists can see the individual wing movements. theycan actually see how hovering works. most birds flap their wings up and down tofly. but hummingbirds move their wings backward
and forward in a figure eight movement, likeoars. this generates lift during the upstroke andthe downstroke, which helps hummingbirds stay stable, instead of bobbing up and down. but how would a hummingbird respond when theweather gets rough? to find out, the scientists moved the hummingbirdinto a wind tunnel and began recording. the wind is coming from the right side oft he cage – up to 20 miles per hour. the hummingbird must fly into the wind toget the sugar water. this high-speed footage shows how it turnsand twists its body in the direction of the air flow, while using its wings for controland its tail like a rudder to stay steady.
even rain can’t stop the hummingbird fromfeeding. see how the bird shakes off drops of waterfrom its body, like a wet dog? the birds can’t afford not to eat. theyhave to consume their weight in nectar every day to survive. and the flowers need them too. as they eat,hummingbirds spread pollen from plant to plant. it’s a symbiosis – a two-way street betweena bird and a flower. these tiny flying machines have evolvedways to hold up their end of the bargain, rain, wind or shine.