hummingbirds

facts about hummingbirds:

Hummingbirds are part of the Trochilidae family found only in the Americas. They are unknown in the Eastern Hemisphere.

The most astonishing quality of hummingbirds is their ability to broadcast color. Hummingbirds radiate like hot coals in the sun. The color that reaches your eye is created by pigment, which absorbs some colors and rejects others. Like soap bubbles, hummingbird's color comes from iridescence, not pigment. It winks on and off, depending on the light source and the angle of the viewer. This allows hummingbirds to flash colors or hide them which is useful for males who want to impress females or threaten other males.

Hummingbirds are built for power and dazzle, hummingbirds are little more than flight muscles covered with feathers. 30% of a hummingbird's weight consists of flight muscles.

Hummingbirds require lots of energy. They have the fastest wing beats of any bird and their hearts beat up to 1,260 beats per minute.
A Hummingbird's flight speed can average 25-30 mph, and can dive up to 60 mph.

They will pull insects out of spiderwebs including the spider itself. Sapsucker holes are a double treat, netting both insects and sap!

A hummingbird can rotate each of its wings in a circle, allowing them to be the only bird which can fly forwards, backwards, up, down, sideways or sit in sheer space. To hover, hummingbirds move their wings forward and backward in a repeated figure eight, much like the arms of a swimmer treading water. Hummingbirds can move instantaneously in any direction, start from its perch at full speed, and doesn't necessarily slow up to land. Hummingbirds can even fly short distances upside down, a trick rollover they employ when being attacked by another bird.

Hummingbirds do not mate for life - the female raises the young on her own. The male hummingbird is not involved with raising the young. The female does all the work of raising her young alone! Females will lay a clutch of only two white eggs and will produce only one brood per season. The hatchlings will remain in the nest for three weeks.
Hummingbirds can live a decade or more in the wild.

FINAL THOUGHT: i am the same person i was before reading this. the world hasn't stop turning and there is still bad things happening as we speak. at the same time: life is wonderful. when i allow myself to look at things deeper than i have before-life isn't as dark as it seems. this world isn't just the bad things we see on the news. if i can appreciate something as small as a hummingbird and learn how amazing such a small thing can be.....then i can find beauty in myself and in others too.

QUESTION: what can you see in yourself or someone else that you find amazing. something that maybe no one really notices, but you appreciate and love (when looking closer at it and learning more about it)?