How Do Hummingbirds Protect Themselves?

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Barbara Dewitt. I'm a National Wildlife Federation Steward with the Broward County Audubon Society. Hummingbirds protect themselves by flying backwards when something's coming at them or flying one side, the other side up or down or flying very quickly away. They're almost like a feather when they fly, some of them are so light weight. They also, with the colors, the males are brightly colored but when they sit, they blend right in, they're very still. And the females are duller colored in most species, sexually dimorphic, so when they sit on their eggs, they're camouflaged in the area in the tree where they sit. And they make the small nest that are brown or beige-y so they fit right in and they're very camouflaged. Also, the hummingbirds will dive if they think a predator such as a cat or a mouse or anything coming into their nesting area, they'll dive at it repeatedly and their wings make the humming noise so that frightens some of the predators away. And they will do that with humans too. If you get near their nest and they don't know that and you don't know that it's a nest, they'll dive at you to get you distracted and maybe they'll be fluttering in another place so that you look at them over there and are distracted from where they have their nest and their eggs of their nestlings in it."