Who is this Creature?

With the clues below, can you guess this creature and its evolving food source?

Around 42 million years ago, it zipped along the hills and forests of Europe. Today, it’s the most widely distributed of its kind in North America. Although its short legs prevent it from walking or hopping, it can still ‘do the shuffle’ along a perch. Quirky and charismatic, this spirited sprite shares an important characteristic with giraffes and llamas. Its unwillingness to conform to societal norms means it builds a home wherever it pleases (including but not limited to, extension cords, porch lights, wind chimes, and chains). Prioritizing alone time, males and females come together to court and mate, then abruptly leave each other in the dust.

As nature’s Houdini, this creature can appear and disappear in a flash, making you feel crazy or dizzy when you watch it. Some schools of thought credit it as the original archetype of modern-day drones. This swift and precise flier, however, has no need for an official high-tech GPS unit; it’s naturally and spectacularly custom-crafted by none other than Mother Nature! With specialized wings that rotate from its shoulders, it can hover and fly forward, backward, in a figure eight pattern, and even upside-down. Living ‘life in the fast lane,’ it can beat its wings more than 50 times per second!

Its Jekyll and Hyde personality means that you never know who might show up for dinner! At any given moment, it can have an angry, violent outburst that turns a peaceful gathering into an all-hell-breaks-loose event. Sadly, no amount of anger management training can help; with ancestors that survived on little food, this trait is forever hard-wired in their brains. Some think that it favors oranges and reds to match its fierce and fiery disposition!

Always a show-off, this small-but-mighty being can look like a brilliant jewel and fly like a rocket, or blend into the background as a dark silhouette. Although it boasts of having the highest metabolic rate, by weight, of any living vertebrate, it secretly acknowledges the downsides. The fact that it has a resting heart rate of 50 beats per second, and a resting body temperature of 1020F, means that it must eat three times its body weight in food daily, just to keep up! If food is scarce, it switches its menu to bugs or sap, just to get by. Enchanting and popular in modern times, it has convinced humans to step in and feed it! Besides that, some of its natural food favorites have changed. By having facial reconstruction to alter its appearance, and arriving later during the year, this special food source can help this dazzling creature just when it needs it most!

Answers:

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Jewelweed

by Judy Sefchick, Wildlife Biologist, Missisquoi NWR