Tiny Warriors

We are having a party, barbecuing in the yard, using the open garage as a staging area for the food and utensils. Suddenly something whizzes past into the garage, startling Bryan, a giant insect? No, it’s a hummingbird come to inspect the bright red handle on the rope that allows you to raise and lower the garage door by hand. If it’s bright red, surely it must be a flower. In a moment the little avian whizzes out of the garage, disappointed but game for another try. Perhaps those red mandivilla flowers on that potted plant? Yes, the flowers will do.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds are common enough in Iowa. They whiz around so fast it’s hard to get pictures of them. During the day, their little hearts beat over 500 times a minute, and their wings beat at the speed of light or more precisely 50 to 75 beats per second. The males wear a red gorget on their throat. The females’ throat feathers are just blah white or gray. A gorget is actually a piece of armor worn during the middle ages to protect a knight’s throat from oncoming swords. Our little hummingbird can be quite aggressive toward interlopers on his flowers. No swords or lances have been sighted, but face-offs and aerial dogfights are part of their repertoire. Their acrobatics are aided by wings they can angle to allow them to fly backward or upside down. We got a laugh out of two tiny hummingbirds facing off across a tomato plant.

Hummingbirds are the tiniest birds we know of. They’re about three to four inches long with a slightly longer wingspan, and weigh one-twelfth to one eighth of an ounce. Their long thin beak is perfect for nectar-gathering, but they can also catch tiny insects on the wing.

The female doesn’t have that splash of red at her throat. She does have the iridescent green back and lighter underside. There’s actually no pigment to create that splash of red or the beautiful green. Instead, there are tiny air-filled structures in the feathers that refract light to create these colors. Think of the way a rainbow refracts light through water droplets.

We put up a hummingbird feeder to entice them to hang around the deck, and it worked. They flit in, take a swig, and flit out again, and if I’m paying attention, I hear their hum as they speed by. It sounds like a giant insect moving fast. They’re not very vocal, but they will chitter in outrage sometimes. Both the male and the female buzz in, check out the feeder with its little red flowers on a ring around what looks like a red upside-down medicine bottle. When they sip from a flower, they hover rather than perch, but the feeder gives them a place to stand for a moment.

They stand on legs that are so short that they’re no use for walking or even hopping—only scuttling sideways or perching. They perch at night, and rather than sleep, they drop into a torpor to save energy. Their little hearts drop their rate to about 50 per minute, down from the 250 to 500 daytime speed, and their body temperature drops a full fifty degrees. Fuel efficiency is the top concern, and they have to eat up to half their body weight in sugar daily to keep the tank full. Can you imagine eating half your body weight in sugar per day? Yikes!!

Hummingbirds, including over 350 extant varieties, are native to the Americas, and have a happy place in American mythology. They are often portrayed as a healer, a helper, or the bringer of fire. They ran the gamut from good luck to sacred, and were sometimes considered manifestations of the spirits of departed loved ones.

In Peru, the Nazca created geoglyphs in their high, arid desert, probably as part of their religion.

One notable geoglyph, created by removing the iron-oxide-laden pebbles from the surface to expose a lighter surface below, depicts a hummingbird measuring 320 feet (98 meters) long and 216 feet (66 meters) wide.  Its long and pointed beak points to the rising sun. You’d think they were designing for aerial viewing, but the design is also visible from nearby hills.

Our little ruby-throated friend arrived in April or May and has left by early September, off on his solo migration of thousands of miles from here to Mexico. He will fly over the Gulf of Mexico in one burst of his tiny energies, and will spend the winter where’ it’s warm and flowers are blooming. His mate will make the same journey on her own time. They’ll come back in the spring to mate and raise another one or two broods.

Meanwhile, an increasingly aggressive group of birds, presumably juveniles, have discovered the feeder. Three of the little warriors chase each other off the feeder, chittering in outrage as they zoom around claiming their territory. There’s plenty of food for all at once, but in spite of the fact that there are five flowers on the feeder, they each demand the entire thing. A wasp comes along and drinks from one of the flowers. She is so pleased with this banquet that she stays and gets in on the battle. She takes a threatening stance and dares the much larger hummingbird to do anything about it. The bird backs away deferentially. She wins. She holds her ground tenaciously, until, in support of the birds, Bryan removes her.

The air around the feeder is still for a few seconds, before a bird whizzes in, intent on a snack. Another bird, watching from the elm tree, sees the interloper and divebombs the intruder, chasing it away. Undaunted, she comes back, whirring about the feeder. The ensuing dog fight is better than a movie. They all join in the fray, buzzing, whirring, chittering in their little voices, and occasionally coming close to whacking each other with their incredibly fast wings. Then they shoot back to the elm or the mulberry where they perch to assess the situation. One comes in and lands on the nearby tomato cage, then flits to the feeder where it dares a sip before three more birds come buzzing in to chase it away. They don’t sip, though—they’re all too busy chasing each other away. Two of them perch for a second on two of the flowers of the feeder, tolerating each other’s company in order to refresh themselves with what they must realize is unlimited bounty. This can’t last, though as aerial bombers descend to chase them off. It’s hard to count the birds as they blur around the feeder. For half a second, though, we count five of them all in the same airspace. Five juveniles, we think. And all five want that feeder for themselves. Nobody can get a sip in, though and the most aggressive of them swears at the rest in a tiny, emphatic chitter.

The dogfight continues for hours fueled by the sugar water in the feeder. These birds are getting ready to head for the Gulf of Mexico. By the first of October, they’ll all be gone. We’ll miss them!