Facts

• Ruby-throated hummingbirds are known for being tiny, weighing only 3.5 grams. They beat their wings about 53 times in one second, and are amazing acrobats. They can hover, stop in mid-air, fly backward, up, down and even upside-down. Their legs are too short to walk, so they eat by hovering, perching or "hawking" (flying off the perch to catch an insect in the air).
  
  

Natural Nectar Diet

• In nature, the ruby-throated hummingbird eats nectar from a variety of wildflowers, as well as from flowers of shrubs and vines. Most of these flowers are tubular in shape, and the bird has a beak and tongue well-adapted to reach into the flower for its meal. This relationship with flowers serves to help flowers pollinate as well. Ruby-throats also consume tree sap.
  
  

Natural Insect Diet

• Ruby-throated hummingbirds also eat insects, which are a valuable part of their diet. Insects provide much-needed protein and fat. Hummingbirds can be seen capturing insects during flight and also from sap on trees. Insects they eat include mosquitoes, fruit flies and sometimes spiders.
  
  

Other Foods

• Hummingbirds can be fed sugar water from man-made hummingbird feeders. Sugar water mimics natural nectar, though it doesn't contain the extra nutrients that nectar and insects provide. However, sugar water is valuable to hummingbirds because of their high energy needs. To mimic nectar found in flowers, feeders can consist of sugar water with ratios of 1:1 or as low as 1:4 (sugar to water).
  
  

Breeding

• Ruby-throated Hummingbird (archilochus colubris) in flight image by Steve Byland from Fotolia.com
  
  Ruby-throated hummingbirds have broods with one to three eggs, and it takes 12 to 14 days for them to hatch. After hatching, the young are fed by the female for about three weeks. She feeds the babies regurgitated nectar and insects, and she may have several broods each year.
  
  

High Energy Needs

• Ruby-throated hummingbirds use a lot of energy flying, yet they have to fly in order to eat. Each day they eat about two times their body weight. Before they migrate in the winter, though, they need to almost double their weight to prepare for the migration. Similar to hibernation in some mammals, hummingbirds can decrease their energy consumption at night while they sleep by decreasing their body temperature.