Thursday, December 19, 2013

hummingbird slo mot

It was frigid outside this morning and I went to check to see if the hummingbird feeders need topping up. In very cold days the hummingbirds often will fly up to drink from the feeder while I am still holding it. I thought I could use this opportunity to capture a slow motion video with the iPhone's 120 FPS (4x overcrank in motion picture jargon) video capability.

update: the original video was rendered sub-optimally for Youtube, i rendered this new one 

It is just a very short clip that is rendered to 1/4 speed of real time. Love to see how she can stop and reverse on a dime. Yes, it is a girl anna's hummingbird! You can hear the hum from the wing beat as well as the chirp she made.


Do you know hummingbirds have relatively weak legs? They have "chicken legs" because they only use them to perch to rest and to sleep. Another fun trivia. Male Anna's hummingbird uses dive bombing to attract its mate. The sound it makes at the bottom of the dive is cause by the feather at the precise speed range which it vibrates like a reed. It reaches incredible speed of about 22 meters per second (44.7 mph). Using this speed I compare its speed to that of an F16 Falcon jet fighter. the screen shot credit of combataircraft.com

If scaled to the size of the F16 fighter Anna's hummingbird has a speed of 9801 mph! Yet F16 top speed is 1320 mph (just slightly over supersonic).

Here is the calculation:
Anna's dive speed = 44.7 mph
Anna's body length = 2.7 inch
F16 length = 592 inch
F16 top speed = 1320 mph

speed of Anna's hummingbird if scale to length of F16 = (592 inch / 2.7 inch) x 44.7 mph = 9801 mph

it is over 7 times faster than F16

see also a newer post with a longer video

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