Fall is here, say goodbye to the hummingbirds!

It seems when we're young we don't have time to slow down and enjoy small miracles. Like a humming bird for example. As a child I observed my grandparents sitting on their front porch watching the humming birds feed from my grandmothers' front porch flower planters. Back in the day, I don't recall having a humming bird feeder. Fast forward another few decades, humming birds brought my Dad and Mom great joy in their last years, especially when they were both too sick to  get up and about. Same for my in-laws ... they loved their hummingbirds and eagerly waited for them to a arrive each summer.

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Now, my husband and I do the same. I have been planting plants that attract hummers for years. But just this week, I've noticed only one. Next week he'll likely be gone as well.

Since hummingbirds are collected by many, I've been painting them on my Functional Art" for several years. I'm showcasing just a few in the blogpost.


Seven Austad from AL.com wrote an excellent article recently called:
Getting high nature's way.

In his story, Steven writes about how hummingbirds migrate to South America:

This remarkable hummingbird flight requires powerful muscles and massive amounts of energy.  The pectoral or flight muscles comprise one-quarter of a hummingbird's total weight.  They use energy at more than 10 times the rate that elite human athletes use during intense exercise.  Energy requires fuel - sugar and oxygen in this case.  To meet their energy demands, hummingbirds drink up to several times their body weight in nectar each day, loading their blood with so much sugar that they would be dangerously diabetic if they were human.  Oxygen is supplied by breathing 250 times per minute, faster than a dog pants, and passing that air through exceptionally efficient lungs.  Oxygen- and sugar-loaded blood is pumped to their muscles, brain, and other tissues by a heart that is five times the size of ours relative to their size.  That heart beats a machine gun-like 20 times per second. 

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Because of these high energy needs, hummingbirds cannot go long periods without food.  As flowers wilt and insects begin to disappear at the end of summer, our hummingbirds must head south.  They winter in southern Mexico and Central America where flowers bloom and insects abound year round. 

Now comes perhaps their most remarkable feat.  As they prepare for migration, they begin to pack on fuel in the form of fat.  Within a couple of weeks, they turn from sleek athletes into butterballs, adding enough fat to double their body weight as they ready for a life-or-death flight. These tiny, moth-size birds now attempt to fly nonstop more than 500 miles across the Gulf of Mexico.  The trip takes about 20 hours if weather conditions are good and if the birds are in good enough condition to make it. If you're keeping track that journey requires more than five million wingbeats in less than a day.  The ones that do make it will have lost more than half their body weight in less than a day.  Call it the Gulf crash diet.  They not only take the weight off, they keep it off -- at least for a few months. 

Read Steven's excellent article here:http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/09/getting_high_natures_way.html

Buy GG's Canvas Prints and other Functional Art prints here:
https://fineartamerica.com/products/green-hummingbird-on-hibiscus-gg-burns-canvas-print.html

Come spring, they will make the return journey.  Bulking up again and losing it again in that dramatic ocean crossing.  You might think that such an intense lifestyle would burn them out quickly, but some hummingbirds survive to make that Gulf crossing nearly 20 times.