Ambassador H.E. Terri Carrion
1.A female ruby-throated hummingbird hovering in mid-air
3.A color plate illustration from Ernst Haeckel‘s Kunstformen der Natur(1899), showing a variety of hummingbirds
the smallest extant bird species is a hummingbird, the 5-cm bee hummingbird, weighing less than a U.S. penny (2.5 g).
feeding two nestlings in Grand Teton National Park
They hover in mid-air at rapid wing-flapping rates, typically around 50 times per second, allowing them also to fly at speeds exceeding 15 m/s (54 km/h; 34 mph), backwards.——————————
Hummingbirds have the highest metabolism of any homeothermic animal. To conserve energy when food is scarce, and nightly when not foraging, they go into torpor, a state similar to hibernation, slowing metabolic rate to 1/15th of its normal rate
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