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Behold the roundness of this Ruby throated Hummingbird in all it’s floofed out glory lol! I photographed this little one while birding along the Creekside Trail at Yates Mill Park last week. This tiny unit sped back and forth between feeding in the patch of blooming Jewelweed below and it’s perch in the Maple tree. Watching it preen on it’s perch, it appears that it was happy and well fed. What Ruby throated Hummingbirds lack in size, they make up for with in large appetite. Their diet is mostly liquid nectar with a high sugar content —and these birds get plenty of exercise with all that zipping around just to get from sip to sip. The hummingbird’s need for lots of calories is due to its high heart rate and small body size in relation to the high level of foraging activity needed to fuel that metabolic fire. Astoundingly, these tiny dynamos need to consume between 3.14 and 7.6 calories a day. That may not seem like much, but if we humans had the metabolism rate of a hummingbird, we’d would have to consume approximately 155,000 calories in a single day just to keep from wasting away. Pretty amazing huh? Photos by @sally_siko of @birdwatching_nc on the fabulous full frame SLR, the @canonusa #5Ds

A post shared by Bird Watching N.C. (@birdwatching_nc) on Sep 15, 2020 at 3:39am PDT