If some ecological catastrophe had wiped out hummingbirds before Europeans landed in America, you might think Indians' stories of the tiny creatures were myths.
Who'd believe in shimmering, gemlike birds only as long as a finger? Who would accept that the tiny wings beat so fast they are a blur, making a musical hummmm as they fly? Who would think they instantly would buzz up, down, backward, forward, drinking their food from flowers? That they would build nests 2 inches across, binding the material together with spider webs?Yet those are only a few facts about some of Utah's most magical wildlife.
"They're so tiny. To me it's just incredible that something that small can exist in such a nasty world," said Frank Howe, nongame avian program coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
He is amazed by the migrations that hummingbirds make every year. Local birds may fly from nesting grounds in Sandy to western Mexico, then back in the spring. An animal 3 inches long flies thousands of miles to return to the same back-yard feeder.
Besides their feats of long-distance navigation, hummingbirds are a lovely sight, with their iridescent plumage and translucent gauze of moving wings. The joy of seeing them and the ease of attracting them has induced many Utahns to set up inexpensive home hummingbird feeders.
One of these hangs from a branch of a slender aspen tree in front of the home of the Mark Stackhouse family who live near a wooded gully in Salt Lake City.
There, in the cool light of dawn one day last week, a black-throated hummingbird perched in a maple tree, keeping an eye on a fellow black-throat that was hovering at the feeder. Quick as thought, it darted at the first hummer and chased it away, temporarily taking over the spot.
"They'll feed pretty aggressively in the morning," said Stackhouse, a former Tracy Aviary educator who now runs a bird-watching guide and consulting service, Westwings.
Nearly all Utah hummingbirds have left for their southern sojourn, except the black-chinned species. They "tend to be the last ones to leave in the fall. Yesterday I did have a calliope hummingbird, which is a really small one," he said.
Hummingbirds are strictly new-world animals, found in much of North and South America. According to the Interior Department's Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md., of the more than 300 hummingbird species, four nest in Utah: the black-chinned and broad-tailed breed throughout most of Utah, the calliope hummingbird in a patch of northern Utah and Costa's hummingbird in southern Utah.
"We have almost entirely black-chinned hummingbirds down in the lower valleys," Stackhouse said, watching the black-chinned birds needle their bills at his feeder. "Up in the higher elevations, in the Cottonwood canyons . . . any of the mountain locations . . . we'll have the broad-tailed hummingbirds as the nesting hummingbird.
"And the tiny calliope hummingbird, which is the smallest bird in North America, nests in willow groves along streams in mid-elevations, about 6,000 to 8,000 feet."
All the Utah nesters are green on the back and white on the stomachs. They have iridescent gorgets just under their bills, with the black-chinned hummingbird's gorget seeming almost black or purple.
But this time of the year, a golden-reddish-backed hummingbird may appear at the feeder. It's the rufous hummingbird en route from the Northwest, or even Alaska, to wintering grounds in Central America.
"Most people with hummingbirds notice them because they're an enormously aggressive bird, and they'll take over their feeder for two or three weeks during the mid- to late summer, and drive all the other hummingbirds away," Stackhouse said.
"But at the same time the migration is starting for black-chinned and broad-tailed hummingbirds and the calliope hummingbirds," he noted.
By the end of August, most hummingbirds are heading south except immature black-chinned hummers, which are still beefing up for the flight -- if that's the right phrase for a bird weighing 3 grams.
Hummingbirds may store up to half their body weight as fat reserves to power their remarkable migrations. The ruby-throated hummingbird can cross the Gulf of Mexico, 500 miles above open water, in 10 to 12 hours. When it lands in Mexico it usually still has enough reserve fuel for another 100 miles of flight.
That hummingbirds wing it so well is proof enough against the folk tale that they sometimes hitch rides on big birds -- the most often cited are migrating geese. The aerodynamics of goose-back riding are absurd, and the hummingbird's weight-to-size ratio is so good that it is actually the more efficient traveler.
They thrive on flower nectar or an artificial substitute in feeders, but hummingbirds are insectivores, too. "They eat large numbers of insects and especially when they're feeding their young," Stackhouse said.
"Different species of hummingbirds get their insects in different ways. Some will actually snatch them out of the air." Others catch insects in the flowers they visit for nectar.
The black-chinned hummingbird is a great fly-catcher. It will hover in a yard, seeming to dash at random to various points. Actually, according to Stackhouse, it's catching gnats and other minute insects.
Must be hard to see bugs that small, you may think. "Of course, what's a tiny insect to us is relatively gargantuan to a hummingbird," he said.
Also, hummers are so little that some insects are larger than they are. An infamous tarantula of South America, the "bird-eating spider," specializes in capturing and feasting on hummingbirds.
Many people think of bird feeding as strictly a wintertime activity, says Howe. But that's the time of the year when hummingbirds aren't around.
"I think recently a lot more people have gotten into setting up hummingbird feeders and planting their yards to attract hummingbirds," he said. The same sort of flowers that will lure in hummingbirds also will attract colorful butterflies and moths.
"What the hummingbirds tend to be attracted to are brightly colored, usually red or orangish flowers that are kind of tubular shape," Howe added. Trumpet vines and penstemon are good examples.
Those who wish to set up a hummingbird feeder can find them at garden shops and wildlife stores. Feeding hummers is easy: mix one part of white sugar to four parts of water, boil, then cool. This homemade nectar can be stored in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks.