Pericles
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The woman in the photographs is Abigail Alfano of Pine, Louisiana. She did not succeed in this communion on a whim. She has studied hummingbirds daily for a considerable length of time..
One morning she put the cup from the feeder with water in it in the palm of her hand. They had gotten used to her standing by the feeder, and came over to her hand.
She says in touching them, they are as light as a feather. She said if she had known her husband would bring out the camera, she would have put on makeup.
There are 16 species of the hummingbird breed in North America, each one is different, and location is the best clue to identification.
Hummingbirds are attracted to many flowering plants—shrimp plants, bee balm, Heliconia, Buddleja, Hibiscus, bromeliads, cannas, verbenas, honeysuckles, salvias, pentas, fuchsias, many penstemons, and others.
It is often stated that they are especially attracted to red and yellow flowers. Once attracted to a garden, hummingbirds may find flowers of other colors more attractive. The location and growing season should determine choices of the plants selected for a garden to attract hummingbirds. They feed on the nectar of these plants and are important pollinators, especially of deep-throated flowers. Most species of hummingbird also take insects, especially when feeding young.
Hummingbird flight has been studied intensively from an aerodynamic perspective: Hovering hummingbirds may be filmed using high-speed video cameras.
Writing in Nature, the biomechanist Douglas Warrick and coworkers studied the Rufous Hummingbird, Selasphorus rufus, in a wind tunnel using particle image velocimetry techniques and investigated the lift generated on the bird's upstroke and downstroke.
They concluded that their subjects produced 75% of their weight support during the down-stroke and 25% during the up-stroke: many earlier studies had assumed (implicitly or explicitly) that lift was generated equally during the two phases of the wingbeat cycle, as is the case of insects of a similar size. This finding shows that hummingbirds' hovering is similar to, but distinct from, that of hovering insects such as the hawk moths. [6]
The Giant Hummingbird's wings beat 8–10 beats per second, the wings of medium-sized hummingbirds beat about 20–25 beats per second and the smallest beat 70 beats per second.
Hummingbirds are found only in the Americas, from southern Alaska and Canada to Tierra del Fuego, including the Caribbean. The majority of species occur in tropical Central and South America, but several species also breed in temperate areas. Excluding vagrants, sometimes from Cuba or the Bahamas, only the migratory Ruby-throated Hummingbird breeds in eastern North America. The Black-chinned Hummingbird, its close relative and another migrant, is the most widespread and common species in the western United States and Canada.
Most hummingbirds of the U.S. and Canada migrate to warmer climates in the northern winter, but some remain in the warmest coastal regions. Some southern South American forms also move to the tropics in the southern winter.
The Rufous Hummingbird shows an increasing trend to migrate east to winter in the eastern United States, rather than south to Central America, as a result of increasing survival prospects provided by artificial feeders in gardens. In the past, individuals that migrated east would usually die, but now many survive, and their changed migration direction is inherited by their offspring. Provided sufficient food and shelter is available, they are surprisingly hardy, able to tolerate temperatures down to at least -20 °C (-4 °F).
Hummingbirds and humans
Hummingbirds sometimes fly into garages and become trapped. It is widely believed that this is because they mistake the hanging (usually red-color) door-release handle for a flower, although hummingbirds can also get trapped in enclosures that do not contain anything red. Once inside, they may be unable to escape because their natural instinct when threatened or trapped is to fly upward. This is a life-threatening situation for hummingbirds, as they can become exhausted and die in a relatively short period of time, possibly as little as an hour. If a trapped hummingbird is within reach, it can often be caught gently and released outdoors. It will lie quietly in the space between cupped hands until released. Alternatively, a hummingbird will land on a soft-bristled broom if held up to the bird and thence the bird may be carried outside to fly away safely.
"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."
Pericles
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