After watching the hummingbirds at my sister-in-law's a few weeks ago, I decided to do a very short study on hummingbirds last week. We read 2 books: The Hungry Hummingbird by Sayre and It's a Hummingbird's Life by Kelly.
The book by Kelly had some really interesting facts:
- "The female buils (her nest) by stitching the walls together with spider silk, gluing them with salive, and stamping a soft cottony down into the lining with her feet." She adds lichen and moss to camouflage the nest.
- "Each egg weighs less than one-half a gram."
- Mother hummingbirds eat 2,000 insects every day!!!
- Hummingbirds can't smell and depend on their eyesight to find food.
- Hummingbirds only have a few enemies. "Some frogs and large fish ahve been known to leap up, catch a hummingbird, and pull it underwater." Other things that eat hummingbirds sometimes: small hawks, kestrel, praying mantis (I found several photos online, including this one IF you want to see it - it's not as grusome as others: ), and dragonflies have been known to try to eat them!!! I had trouble believing this one, but also found this fact on EEK!
- They travel from Florida across the Gulf of Mexico in about 25 hours flying at a rate of about 25 mph.
- "Sometimes balloonists hang feeders from their baskets to give the voyager (hummingbird) a much-appreciated snack" during their long trip.
We also made what we called hummingbird nests, but their usually called bird's nests. Ours are made of melted chocolate chips (in microwave), chow mein noodles, and then a candy egg. We actually didn't care much for the taste, but they were fun to make... and cute!
Such neat facts! I've always loved hummingbirds, but we've never studied them in detail, maybe we need to do that over the summer. We've not had as many as usual coming to our feeders this year as last, I'm not sure why.
ReplyDeleteLove Alexandra's drawing, she did a great job!
Blessings, Melissa
www.homeschoolblogger.com/melissal89
Hummingbirds are one of my favorites. I have a collection of porcelain ones that I am very fond of. Thank you so much for all of the info about them. So many things that I did not know. We have not had as many at our feeders this year either. Can't figure out why. I sure do miss all of them being around my patio. :0(
ReplyDeleteWe get about two humming birds here a year. Usually in the fall and on my hosta flowers. I absolutely love them!
ReplyDeleteYou might want to check out this site. http://www.abigailsings.com/hummingbirds/ I checked on Snopes and they say these images are real...this lady actually had hummingbirds feeding out of her hand. Amazing if you ask me!
The grid drawing looks great too!
Juno
http://homefrontlines.blogspot.com
Dana,
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the great info! We have wound down in our 'schooling' but with all the great info on your site---we may have to learn about hummingbirds! Great photo. Do you know what kind of HB that is? We have ruby throated...they are green. Yours looked grey? Just curious. We'll be doing a quick study tomorrow! Thanks! Christy