Hummingbird

by Jacob on 28. May, 2009 in general

dr robert 30. May, 2009 at 2:15 pm #

well,
i had just read a short story called
“Mute Dancers:How to watch a Hummingbird” by Diane Ackerman,

when I saw your post.

“a lot of hummingbirds die in their sleep.

like a small fury of iridescence,a hummingbird spends the day at high speed.darting and swiveling among thousands of nectar rich blossoms.

hummingbirds have huge hearts and need colossal amounts of energy to fuel their flights,so they live in a perpetual mania to find food.

like a tiny drum roll, its heart beats at 500 times a minute.
frighten a hummingbird and its heart can race to over 1200 times a minute.

feasting and flying, courting and dueling, hummingbirds consume life at a fever pitch.

no warmblooded animal on earth uses more energy, for its size.
but that puts them at great peril.

by days end, wrung out and exhausted, a hummingbird rests at near collapse.”

“in the dark night of the hummingbird,it can sink into a zombielike state of torpor; its breathing grows shallow and its wild heart slows to only 36 beats a minute…
when dawn breaks on the fuchia and columbine, hummingbirds must jump-start their hearts and fire up their fight muscles to raise their body temperatures for another all-or-nothing day.

that demands a colossal effort,which some cant’ manage.

so a lot of hummingbirds die in their sleep”.

cautionary tale anyone?

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Beetlejuice 30. May, 2009 at 4:49 pm #

Another happy accident of mother nature!

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