Do hummingbirds have legs?

The other day I was having a rather lively discussion with  a great friend and it seemed like we were getting nowhere about a touchy topic.  Actually we were talking about money, it’s worth and how to respect it.  I had been watching a hummingbird right outside our window gently put his beak into a flower then move on to another. He would go away and come back, repeating the process.  I was really enjoying this distraction and  I shared this with my friend and he watched mesmerized as well.  Just then he looks away and momemts later asks me ” do hummingbirds have legs?” 

You guessed it, I  felt it coming and I could not stop it.  I  laughed, I cried, my  nose ran and my stomach hurt and I could not stop laughing.  The look on his face was priceless as he tried to imagine if he’d ever seen their legs before.  “I only see them fly” he said.

Do hummingbirds have legs?  Have you ever seen them?  There is a lot of information that our minds just fill in for us.  My friend is a pilot and he had imagined the little hummingbird coming in for a landing like a floatplane, carefully positioning itself so it was a perfect landing.  It had to be perfect, after all there  still was the question about  do hummingbirds really  have legs?

There is a lot of fascinating information out there about the animals that we love that we do not know.  In our busy hectic lives who has time to google little known facts about ?  The truth  is that the more we know the more we understand. Chief Dan George left us with these words of wisdom…

If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other.
If you do not talk to them you will not know them, and what you do not know you will fear.
What one fears one destroys.    Chief Dan George

In the spirit of helping people to understand more about the animals we live with I am going to use  this animal communication blog to relay interesting information as I find it.  But, back to interesting facts about hummingbirds…

•  yes, hummingbirds do have legs, although they are not strong enough to walk with they can perch with them
• hummingbirds are territorial and have been know to bravely defend their flower bush from predators- even hawks
• a hummingbird will feed about 50 – 60 times a day from a single bush
• they have hollow bones and are warm blooded
• they can fly up, down, sideways, forward, backwards and they can hover
• they can beat their wings up to 80 times a second which creates a humming noise, hence their name
• they love nectar and will drink sugar water from a feeder of any color, including red

Do you know any other interesting facts about hummingbirds?