Hummingbird and Related Topics

Seeking shade is one method of cooling. Here sooty tern chicks are using a black-footed albatross chick for shade.

Torpor

State of decreased physiological activity in an animal, usually marked by a reduced body temperature and metabolic rate.

Animals that undergo daily torpor include birds (even tiny hummingbirds, notably Cypselomorphae)

Apodiformes

Traditionally, the bird order Apodiformes contained three living families: the swifts (Apodidae), the treeswifts (Hemiprocnidae), and the hummingbirds (Trochilidae).

Bee hummingbird

Size of M. helenae compared to a human hand

The bee hummingbird, zunzuncito or Helena hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) is a species of hummingbird, native to the island of Cuba in the Caribbean.

Swift (bird)

The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds.

Swifts are placed in the order Apodiformes with hummingbirds.

Sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists, which in turn provide herbivore protection.

An Australian painted lady feeding on a flower's nectar

Gymnadenia conopsea flowers with nectar-filled spur

Ants on extrafloral nectaries in the lower surface of a young Drynaria quercifolia frond

Loxura atymnus butterflies and yellow crazy ants consuming nectar secreted from the extrafloral nectaries of a Spathoglottis plicata bud

Nylanderia flavipes ant visiting extrafloral nectaries of Senna

Common nectar-consuming pollinators include mosquitoes, hoverflies, wasps, bees, butterflies and moths, hummingbirds, honeyeaters and bats.

Giant hummingbird

The giant hummingbird (Patagona gigas) is the only member of the genus Patagona and the largest member of the hummingbird family, weighing 18 - 24 g and having a wingspan of approximately 21.5 cm and length of 23 cm. This is approximately the same length as a European starling or a northern cardinal, though the giant hummingbird is considerably lighter because it has a slender build and long bill, making the body a smaller proportion of the total length.

An Australian painted lady (Vanessa kershawi) feeding on nectar through its long proboscis

Nectarivore

Animal which derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of the sugar-rich nectar produced by flowering plants.

An Eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica) pierces the corolla to feed from a daffodil (Narcissus sp.)

Two Spot swordtail butterflies (Graphium nomius) mud puddling for minerals

A female ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) feeds on nectar from a sunflower (Helianthus annuus)

A grey-headed flying fox (Pteropus poliocephalus) feeds on nectar, its face covered with yellow pollen

For example, hummingbirds and hawkmoths have long narrow beaks that can reach nectar at the bottom of long tubular flowers.

Beak

External anatomical structure found mostly in birds, but also in turtles, non-avian dinosaurs and a few mammals.

The bony core of the beak is a lightweight framework, like that seen on this barn owl's skull.

A gull's upper mandible can flex upwards because it is supported by small bones which can move slightly backwards and forwards.

Position of vomer (shaded red) in neognathae (left) and paleognathae (right)

The sawtooth serrations on a common merganser's bill help it to hold tight to its fish prey.

A bird's culmen is measured in a straight line from the tip of the beak to a set point — here, where the feathering starts on the bird's forehead.

The gapes of juvenile altricial birds are often brightly coloured, as in this common starling.

The gape flange on this juvenile house sparrow is the yellowish region at the base of the beak.

Falcons have a small tubercule within each nare.

The rock dove's operculum is a mass at the base of the bill.

The nail is the black tip of this mute swan's beak.

This Arctic tern chick still has its egg tooth, the small white projection near the tip of its upper mandible.

The beaks of the now-extinct Huia (female upper, male lower) show marked sexual dimorphism

The platypus uses its bill to navigate underwater, detect food, and dig. The bill contains receptors that help detect prey.

When billing, northern gannets raise their beaks high and clatter them against each other.

Kiwis have a probing bill that allows them to detect motion

Serrations on hummingbird bills, found in 23% of all hummingbird genera, may perform a similar function, allowing the birds to effectively hold insect prey.

The pollinating wasp Dasyscolia ciliata in pseudocopulation with a flower of Ophrys speculum

Coevolution

In biology, coevolution occurs when two or more species reciprocally affect each other's evolution through the process of natural selection.

Honey bee taking a reward of nectar and collecting pollen in its pollen baskets from white melilot flowers

Purple-throated carib feeding from and pollinating a flower

A fig exposing its many tiny matured, seed-bearing gynoecia. These are pollinated by the fig wasp, Blastophaga psenes. In the cultivated fig, there are also asexual varieties.

Pseudomyrmex ant on bull thorn acacia (Vachellia cornigera) with Beltian bodies that provide the ants with protein

Brood parasite: Eurasian reed warbler raising a common cuckoo

Predator and prey: a leopard killing a bushbuck

Sexual conflict has been studied in Drosophila melanogaster (shown mating, male on right).

Long-tongued bees and long-tubed flowers coevolved, whether pairwise or "diffusely" in groups known as guilds.

Hummingbirds and ornithophilous (bird-pollinated) flowers have evolved a mutualistic relationship.

Pollination

Transfer of pollen from an anther of a plant to the stigma (female part) of a plant, later enabling fertilisation and the production of seeds, most often by an animal or by wind.

Female Xylocopa with pollen collected from night-blooming cereus

Bee pollinating a plum tree (Prunus cerasifera)

Hummingbirds typically feed on red flowers

A European honey bee collects nectar, while pollen collects on its body.

Africanized honey bees immersed in Opuntia engelmannii cactus Pollen

The wasp Mischocyttarus rotundicollis transporting pollen grains of Schinus terebinthifolius

An Andrena bee gathers pollen from the stamens of a rose. The female carpel structure appears rough and globular to the left.

Bombus ignitus, a popular commercial pollinator in Japan and China

The graph shows the number of honeybee colonies in the U.S. from 1982 to 2015,

The graph shows the average dollar amount per colonies received by beekeepers depending on the pollinated crop.

Geranium incanum, like most geraniums and pelargoniums, sheds its anthers, sometimes its stamens as well, as a barrier to self-pollination. This young flower is about to open its anthers, but has not yet fully developed its pistil.

The lower two of these Geranium incanum flowers have opened their anthers, but not yet their stigmas. Note the change of colour that signals to pollinators that they are ready for visits. The uppermost flower is somewhat more mature than the others and has already shed its stamens.

This Geranium incanum flower has shed its stamens, and deployed the tips of its pistil without accepting pollen from its own anthers. (It might of course still receive pollen from younger flowers on the same plant.)

In zoophily, pollination is performed by vertebrates such as birds and bats, particularly, hummingbirds, sunbirds, spiderhunters, honeyeaters, and fruit bats.