Ruby-throated Hummingbird

The ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) is the only hummingbird that breeds in eastern North America. Weighing about as much as a penny, it migrates each year to Central America and is listed as Least Concern.

🧬 Field Guide Specimen: Open Ruby-throated Hummingbird in the CRV Science Field Guide to log the specimen, see its place among the Reptilia lineages in the Cladogram Explorer, and test your recall in the Red List conservation game.

Many birds fatten up and cross the Gulf of Mexico in one flight of roughly 800 kilometers, lasting around a day. The trip is possible because the bird can nearly double its body mass with stored fat before departure.

Its wings beat on the order of 50 times per second and its heart can exceed a thousand beats a minute while feeding. To survive cold nights it enters torpor, dropping its metabolic rate and temperature.

The red gorget of the male is not produced by pigment but by microscopic layers in the feathers that reflect specific wavelengths, so it appears black from some angles. Hummingbirds are important pollinators of tubular red flowers.

• Monarch Butterfly — another long-distance migrant
• Thermodynamics — energy budgets of flight