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Why and how do hummingbirds hover?
December, 2007Douglas A. James, University Professor of biological sciences, replies:
Most of the calories consumed by hummingbirds come from the nectar of flowers, which they consume by reaching into the funnel of the flower with their long beaks. The bird has to be in front of the flower to accomplish this, but there is no perch there. Therefore, the hummingbird hovers in space. Hummingbirds also eat tiny insects as a source of much-needed protein. The nectar is essentially sugar water - no "no-carb" diets for hummingbirds.
The wing of a hummingbird, unlike that of most birds, has a short upper and lower arm, but a long hand - the part we use to make Buffalo wings from chickens, named for Buffalo, N.Y., where the practice originated. The long flight feathers attached to the hand are given circular rotations at the shoulder joint, thus acting like helicopter blades. So a hummingbird hovers in a manner similar to a helicopter - a two-bladed one, each wing functioning as a separate blade. They change the orientation of the "blades" to move forward or backward, and the pitch of the feathers to move upward. The wing beat - or wing circle - is about 50 times a second. Regular birds operate like fixed-wing aircraft, with the up and down wing beats providing forward motion as well as lift.