Flying jewels
Hummingbirds delight as they return to the Houston area to fatten up
Virtually the entire population of ruby-throated hummingbirds that all breed east of the Rockies will be migrating through our area from now through early October.
Scores of the emerald green pixies will converge on our flower gardens and hummingbird feeders to slurp down flower nectar and sugar water to fuel their hyperkinetic lives. The males will display a throat of radiant red while the females will show a dull gray throat.
Hummingbirds rivet our attention as they hover above a flower with wings whirring in a blur. They then propel themselves backwards, upwards, downwards and sideways.
Their wings whir about 50-60 beats per second in flight while their hearts pound an astonishingly 1,200 beats a minute only to slow down to a mere 250 beats a minute while perched.
They speed away in an eye blink, vanishing in the sky or disappearing into the trees. Weighing less than a nickel, they migrate improbable distances — flying over mountains, plains, cities and seas — between North American breeding grounds and Latin American wintering grounds.
They’re arriving here from as far away as Ontario, Canada or from places nearby locales as East Texas. They’ll fatten up before heading to southern Mexico and Central America for the winter. A few will even stay in Texas for the winter.
Every time I see a hummingbird, I think of the bird as nature’s miracle. A study at the University of Toronto (Functional Ecology, 2013) showed that hummingbirds turn sugar into energy far more efficiently than us humans. For example, when we drink a can of sweetened soda pop, our bodies send the sugar to the liver where it’s turned into fat. When a hummingbird sips sugar from flowers or feeders, its body sends the sugar straight to the muscles for rapid energy.
That’s why a hummingbird must refuel with flower nectar or sugar water about every 15 minutes. If a hummer were the size of you and me, it would need to gulp down a can of soda pop once a minute to fuel its daily activity.
Hummingbirds do need to build up body fat, which they get from eating insects. Put another way, sugar energizes them while insects nourish them.
For all our understanding of hummingbird flight and metabolism, we are still left with unanswered questions about how their bodies function with extraordinary efficiency. But I simply look out my window and gaze at them in utter astonishment of their beauty and grace.