Hummingbird helps researchers to study and monitor air quality

Hummingbirds seem to defy gravity. These tiny fliers can stop in mid-flight, hover, fly backwards, or zip away so fast it appears they simply vanish into thin air, like fairies. To do so, they flap their small but strong, flexible wings at a dizzying rate of 80 beats per second. So fast, that you can hear the characteristic hum of wings cutting through air, but not actually see them move.

The main reason for the hummingbirds' aerial efforts is food. Hummingbirds are nectar specialists, feeding on the sugary, high-energy liquid that plants secrete in their flowers. Hovering gives hummingbirds the ability to efficiently sip nectar where no perches exist. Flying fast between flowers minimizes time between meals, an important factor for an animal that must eat more than one-and-a-half times its weight per day to meet its metabolic demands.

What the researchers find from monitoring hummingbirds will help the EPA's overall efforts to study and monitor air quality. The team plans to build on their initial study this summer by determining the size of the birds' feeding range, which may also be influenced by air quality. Whatever the team discovers in the future may have important implications for human health.