Ode to the hummingbird (By Albert Collins)

  1. 79pmooney

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    Albert Collins, the great bluesman and guitarist. It is a little known fact, but his biggest song was written in honor of the mighty hummingbirds, specifically those that stay north this time of year. (I have several I feed all winter.)

    The song? "I ain't drunk, I'm just drinkin'!"

    My four (?) hummers drank 3 ounces of sugar water since yesterday morning. (I can't get them to wear name tags and they are backlit from my windows so I am never quite sure who's who.) So, lets just assume there are four of them and they ate all their meals here. (I know they don't; they go somewhere when my feeders are empty and return when I fill them.) 3 ounces x 28 grams/ounce = 84 grams. 84 grams/4 birds = 21 grams per bird. Say 1 1/2 days of feeding from yesterday morning 'til now. (They don't eat after dark.) 21/1.5 = 14 grams per bird per day. Best numbers I can get for a hummer weight is about 3 grams = one penny. 14/3 ~= 5 times the hummer's body weight. That's 850 pints for you manly drinkers.

    I buy 10 pound bags of sugar for them, probably every 18 months. During the summer about half gets dumped out after about 5 days. In winter the feeders are near empty in four. So they actually consume easily half the bag. (Nearly 800 hummer weights consumed.)

    Pretty amazing creatures!

    Edit: I realized as soon as I sent this it needed an OT in the topic. Sorry guys!

    Ben

    Posted 4 months ago

  2. 79pmooney

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    More observations. I have 3 feeders. One is in front of my study window, in full view as I sit there. It has been occupied about one third of the time by two different hummers. They have visibly lowered the sugar water level as I've been here.

    The sugar water mix I use is 4:1 water to sugar by volume. To get it to mix, I have to bring the temperature up close to boiling. It is very sweet and a mess to spill. So one ounce of water contains a 1/4 (dry) ounce of sugar = 25 calories. (Joy of Cooking) And that half ounce of water consumed by each bird each day is 12 calories/day. Doesn't sound very high. Scaled up to that manly drinker? 12/3 grams X 454 gms/lb x 170lbs = 308,720 calories per day (~=103 lbs of fat). Say about 100 miles to burn of a pound of fat. That's 10,000 miles. Hmmf, I'm giving up. Doing LSD miles, just rolling for 24 hours straight to keep the speeds down, it's still over 400 miles per hour. I suspect wind resistance will complicate things.

    Ben

    Posted 4 months ago

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