The hummingbird is the smallest bird on Earth. It is endemic to Cuba, a socialist country like ours. A member of the hummingbird family, the hummingbird is agile and extremely small. This "extremely small" is not a general description; it is truly tiny. In Chinese, "extremely" is synonymous with "most." It ranked sixth on CNN's list of the world's cutest species in 2013.
An adult bee hummingbird is only 5-7 centimeters long, including the combined length of its beak and tail feathers. Even a straight line connecting your thumb and forefinger is longer than that. Can you imagine a bird flying freely between your thumb and forefinger? The bee hummingbird is that small and miniature.
Not only that, it is also the smallest warm-blooded animal on Earth. Their slender bodies, easily held in one hand, are lighter than a one-yuan coin, averaging only 2 grams, while a one-yuan coin weighs around 6 grams. 2 grams! It's hard to imagine that such a number would be used to represent the weight of a bird, rather than an insect.
Despite being the smallest bird on Earth, the hummingbird's flight skills are in no way inferior to, and in fact, far superior to, those of its relatives. During flight, they defy gravity by rapidly flapping their wings at a frequency of up to 80 times per second, producing a melodious buzzing sound. When mating season arrives and they display themselves to attract mates, some hummingbirds achieve an astonishing wingbeat frequency of up to an incredible 200 times per second!
Hummingbirds primarily feed on nectar, and their superb hovering flight is a product of this. Like women, they pour their passionate love into each brightly colored, delicate flower. This love seems endless; they never stop, immediately moving on to the next flower after finishing the first.
It is precisely because of this enormous amount of pollination that tropical flowering plants are able to be widely pollinated and continuously reproduce. In a broader sense, the hummingbird has become one of the maintainers of its habitat's ecological environment.
