{"id":16056,"date":"2013-01-09T15:15:45","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T15:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/?p=16056"},"modified":"2017-08-07T23:06:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-07T22:06:00","slug":"to-catch-a-humming-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/2013\/01\/09\/to-catch-a-humming-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"To Catch a Humming Bird"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Humming<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s no secret humming birds beat their wings fast, but it’s also nice to catch one in the act.<\/p>\n

I snapped this Allen’s Hummingbird (Selaphorus sasin<\/em>) yesterday at a shutter speed of 1\/800th second (0.00125 s) and his wings are still a blur.<\/p>\n

Humming birds can beat their wings at up to 200 beats per second<\/a> – the wing completing its travel in 0.005 s.  I reckon the blurred area above represents about a quarter of a full beat, which is just what we’d expect if this guy were flapping near the max. (i.e. 4 x 0.00125 = 0.005).<\/p>\n

Look how the body stays almost perfectly still; it reminds me of those stories about being able to balance a coin on the bonnet of a Rolls-Royce.  There is a slight wobble: if you compare his head to his foot (and the pictures below where he’s settled down) the head shows a slight shimmer.<\/p>\n

With the sun catching him like that, we’re also getting a good demonstration of the iridescent color effects humming birds exhibit due to interference of light within the microstructure of their feathers.<\/p>\n

Here are a few more pictures of the same bird:<\/p>\n

\"Humming<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Humming<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Humming<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s no secret humming birds beat their wings fast, but it’s also nice to catch one in the act. I snapped this Allen’s Hummingbird (Selaphorus sasin) yesterday at a shutter speed of 1\/800th second (0.00125 s) and his wings are still a blur. Humming birds can beat their wings at up to 200 beats per … Continue reading To Catch a Humming Bird<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"To Catch a Humming Bird (Zoonomian) http:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-4aY","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1322,201,1321],"class_list":["post-16056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-allens-humming-bird","tag-california","tag-humming-bird"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-4aY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16056"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18445,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16056\/revisions\/18445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}