Remarkable Hummingbirds

Matthew 10:31

“Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”

One of the delights of living in the Pacific Northwest of the United States is being able to watch the hummingbirds. As soon as we saw these remarkable little birds for ourselves, my wife and I knew we had to attract them to our yard. So we invested in feeders and kept them topped up with sugar solution through the summer months. Two species seemed to predominate in our garden – the orange-bellied Rufous and the beautiful, iridescent green Anna’s hummingbird.

Of course, nothing previously seen on the TV screen could prepare me for the delight of watching the little creatures fly backwards as they finished feeding. They rarely landed, so we had no view of their wings, which move so fast that they are just a blur.

Normally, when a bird’s wings upstroke, this is simply to get the wings back in position for another downstroke. Hummingbirds are different. Both strokes have power. The amazing way in which hummingbirds beat their wings uses a huge amount of energy for such a tiny bird. In fact, it has been estimated that hummingbirds need an energy input, which, if scaled up to human dimensions, would be the equivalent of us eating 1,300 hamburgers a day! So much energy would be produced that we would actually catch fire!

It should be obvious that the mechanisms required to cope with such energy changes could not have evolved by chance. The little hummingbird is a wonderful example of God’s design.

Author: Paul F. Taylor

Prayer: When we consider the way these birds were designed, we thank You, Lord, that You care about us more than these wonderful creatures. Amen.

Ref: Dreves, D. (1991), The Hummingbird: God’s Tiny Miracle, < https://answersingenesis.org/birds/the-hummingbird-gods-tiny-miracle/ >, accessed 9/26/2018. Image: Matthew Field, CC BY-SA 3.0.