The smallest bird in the world - one of the bravest on our planet!

To date, science knows about five hundred species of these wonderful birds. It's hard to believe, but the smallest bird in the world does not exceed the size of a bumblebee! True, there are also large individuals: they are the size of a swallow.

What do they eat?

Note that at the end of the head of the hummingbird is not an ordinary bird's beak, but something in the form of an elongated proboscis. The fact is that the smallest bird in the world eats floral nectar! And the beak-trunk to her in this great helps. Bird on the fly, without sitting on the plant, sucks the nectar from the flower with its tubular tongue, able to protrude from the long beak for some distance. It should be noted that sucked nectar does not stay in the stomach, it immediately passes into the intestine. This is a very high-calorie food for hummingbirds. In addition to flower nectar, the menu of hummingbirds consists of small insects that live in flowers and on leaves of trees. Interestingly, these birds for a day eat twice as much as their own weight!

Fast flight

The smallest bird in the world flies so fast that it is simply impossible to trace it with the naked eye. They fly so swiftly with their wings that only the shadows of their movement are visible! Imagine, in one second they make up to 80 strokes of their wings at a speed of 90 kilometers per hour! The flight is fast, the stops are instant, the turns are cutting. At the same time, the position of the body of fast-flying birds changes instantly!

Living rainbow

The color of this bird is not determined by the color of its plumage. The sunbeam plays on its feathers: depending on its fall, in different places of the body, color transfusions of all precious stones are visible. Some scientists argue that the human eye can not catch all the shades of this truly wonderful plumage. Even in the museum, a small hummingbird, represented as a scarecrow, shimmers like a real rainbow!

Work days

Interestingly, the smallest bird in the world never sits on the ground, "hanging" for the night, like a bats mammal (bats) - "upside down". Hummingbirds do not fall asleep in the ordinary sense of the word. They fall into the so-called anabiosis: the work of their heart slows down, the breathing slows down, the temperature of the calf becomes two times lower ... But only the morning comes, and the sun begins to warm up, as the hummingbirds "come to life" and begin to work, as they say, in the everyday rhythm: From flower to flower in search of nectar, chasing gnats, etc. If a hummingbird has chicks, then with the help of its miracle-proboscis she feeds flower nectar, both them and herself.

Small but daring

Hummingbirds are pretty bold birds. They bravely defend their nests and chicks, as well as eggs, which, by the way, are as large as a pea, and fearlessly can attack the enemy. There were cases when a small bird with a powerful blow to the eye of a wood snake dumped it to the ground!

Unfortunately, there are no hummingbirds in Russia. But we have our own feathered baby. The smallest bird in Russia is a yellow-headed king, but that's another story, friends ...