Okay, but do hummingbirds ever chill?

E36. Hummingbirds run one of the fastest metabolisms of any animal with a backbone, which is why we picture them as permanently buzzing. Scott sits down with Dr. Anusha Shankar, assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, who studies how hummingbirds budget energy in a world that keeps moving the goalposts. It turns out the blur at your feeder is the exception, not the rule.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Why the same bird might spend three hours a day flying, or thirteen, depending entirely on what the flowers are doing
• What happens overnight when a hummingbird lets itself go cold, and how long it takes to come back
• Seven months in the Ecuadorian cloud forest, and the hummingbirds that sat on the nets and waited

Plus: the doubly labeled water method, a sugar concentration threshold you can taste-test at your own feeder at your own risk, and the reason Anusha gets called the hummingbird pee person.

The "snoring" hummingbird video Scott and Anusha discuss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uEfmQt34Nc

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Ruby-throated Hummingbird audio contributed by Trenton Voytko, ML604314061
• Black Metaltail audio contributed by Pedro Allasi Condo, ML663268821
• Violet-tailed Sylph audio contributed by Paul Coopmans, ML58045
• White-booted Racket-tail audio contributed by Daniel Cadena, ML256331
• Bee Hummingbird video contributed by Timothy Barksdale, ML440270

Black Metaltail photograph by Thibaud Aronson, via iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.