What do hummingbirds eat?
Photo: Flickr user carlosluis
It’s fun to watch hummingbirds gather around a backyard feeder. But you might wonder: Are you really helping out those hummingbirds by giving them sugar water? Isn’t sugar water just ‘empty calories.’
Sugar water is fine for hummingbird feeders – in fact, aside from a few trace minerals, it’s very similar to the nectar hummingbirds retrieve from flowers.
Hummingbirds need those “empty” calories for energy – because they have an incredibly high metabolism. The heart of a hummer beats over twelve hundred times per minute when it’s in flight. A hummingbird’s wings beat over seventy times a second in normal flight. They fly by rotating the entire wing, which allows them to hover and fly backward.
What’s more, hummingbirds need all those calories to chase after an important source of food – insects. About a third of their diet consists of small insects and spiders – which they sometimes catch in mid-air. Sugar water and nectar help give them fuel to find the insects they eat for protein. But there are times when hummingbirds aren’t so active. To conserve energy, they regularly enter a state called “torpor” – it’s a lot like hibernation. Their body temperature drops, their heartbeat slows and their respiration decreases. They’re likely to become torpid at night, when it is cooler – and return to normal the next morning.
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