Most hummingbirds fly south to spend the winter. But Andy has a hummingbird friend who lives in the garden all year long. So we have some first hand information to answer this question. First, Andy read about hummers in seven different books. Then he went outdoors to watch his own favorite hummer in action.

Hank is an Anna hummingbird, just as pretty and as cute as can be. His glistening back is greenish bronze and around his tiny throat he wears a wide bib of shiny ruby red. Best of all, Hank and Andy have an understanding. If Andy keeps the hummingbird feeding station filled with a formula of honey and water, once in a while   just once in a while  Hank will sit still just long enough to be admired.

Most of the time he is as busy as a darting sunbeam. He flashes straight up and straight down and hovers in one spot like a helicopter. He backs away from his dinner and then shoots off through the air like a flying arrow. No other bird in the world can do so many tricks and aerial acrobatics.

Hank’s flying tricks, of course, depend upon his whirring wings and Andy tried to watch how they work. But the wings of a hummer move too fast even for the eyes of a pixie to follow, The books say that they beat back and forth 55 and sometimes 70 times a second   and moving at this speed, the sharpest eyes can see only a fuzzy blur. Even an ordinary camera is too slow to show those wing beats. We need a special camera which takes a picture in one 5,OOOth part of a second.

Part of the hummer's secret was solved by slow motion camera pictures. Scientists also studied his tiny bones to see how they move and swing around at the wing joints.

He beats his wings in oval loops which slope at an angle to the ground. And he can swing his wings around in backward or forward loops   which is why he is the only bird in the world who can fly backwards as well as forward. He flies somewhat like an insect and he squeaks like a mouse.

Hank is called a hummingbird because of the whirring noise he makes when he flies or hovers in the air. Those flashing wings beat so fast that they make the air buzz with vibrations. Sometimes, especially when the formula in the feeding station is all gone, he swoops close to Andy’s head and your pixie friend gets a buzz in the ear.

There are about 750 different hummers and they live in the New World. They are the smallest birds in the world and the Papa hummers look like living jewels. The scientists were thinking of their whirring wings when they gave the hummers the family name Trochilidae   a word which means a turning wheel