As the dog days arrive, it feels far too hot outside for anything more than perhaps a leisurely lounge by the pool, inertia the only way to endure the heat and humidity of peak summer. Perhaps too hot even to bear thinking about moving. So this month, let’s not contemplate our Ruby-throated Hummingbirds whirring away in the August swelter, wings beating an astounding 53 times a second (over 3,000 times a minute!).

Instead of exploring how our tiny birds are toiling away this month, rearing young and consuming calories for the long migration to come, let’s take a languid little detour. Indulge a summer reverie. A remembrance of hummingbirds past. And consider a tiny history – etymological, cultural, evolutionary – of our tiny birds.

Anyone who has heard that familiar summer thrum around their feeders or flowers, does not have to guess how the hummingbird got its onomatopoeic name. The first recorded usage of the word “hummingbird” comes from the writings of Massachusetts colonist Thomas Morton published in 1637. Which means, considering Ruby-throats are the only hummingbird common to New England, that the first hummingbird described in English was most likely a Ruby-throated Hummingbird! In Morton’s New English Canaan, he catalogs the flora and fauna of his new environs, describing in particular detail the peculiar new species unknown to Europeans:

“There is a curious bird to see to, called a humming bird,no bigger then a great Beetle; that out of question lives upon the Bee, which hee eateth and catcheth amongst Flowers: For it is his Custome to frequent those places. Flowers hee cannot feed upon by reason of his sharp bill, which is like the poynt of a Spannish needle, but shorte. His fethers have a glosse like silke, and, as hee stirres, they shew to be of a chaingable coloure: and has bin, and is, admired for shape, coloure and size.”

While this is the first known use of “hummingbird,” other English colonists had been marveling in their letters about curious little birds that hummed, offering some delightful descriptions. The earliest known written reference comes from a 1632 correspondence from England to Massachuessets asking, “You have a litle bird in your contrie that makes a humminge noyse, a little bigger then a bee, I pray send me one of them over, perfect in his fethers, in a little box.” 

In New England’s Prospect published in 1634, another work by a New England colonist describing the territory, the author William Wood offers this observance:

“The Humbird is one of the wonders of the Countrey, being no bigger than a Hornet, yet hath all the dimensions of a Bird, as bill and wings, with quils, Spider-like legges, small clawes: For colour, shee is glorious as the Raine-bow; as shee flies, shee makes a little humming noise like a humble bee: wherefore she is called the Humbird.” 

And perhaps my favorite, from John Josselyn’s New-England’s Rarities from 1674: 

“The Humming Bird, the least of all Birds, little bigger than a Dor, of variable glittering Colours, they feed upon Honey, which they suck out of Blossoms and Flowers with their long Needle-like Bills; they sleep all Winter, and are not to be seen till the Spring, at which time they breed in little Nests, made up like a bottom of soft, Silk-like matter, their Eggs no bigger than a white Pease, they hatch three or four at a time, and are proper to this Country.” 

I commend Josselyn for reasonably, albeit inaccurately, surmising that hummingbirds hibernate the winter away, instead of say, positing that they fly to the moon, or morph into another species, or bury themselves in riverbeds, or grow from barnacles on trees. Yes, all once theories attempting to explain the seemingly sudden emergence or disappearance of migrating species.

Earlier than the English colonists, explorers in South America were describing hummingbirds as early as 1557. While English speakers adopted a descriptive name for the wondrous New World birds that captured their imaginations, almost all European languages and many other world languages call hummingbirds by some version of colibri. The exact etymology of colibri is not completely known, but it is generally understood to have entered the Spanish and French languages in the Caribbean, perhaps via the native word in the language of the Taino, the indigenous people of the Caribbean, and was disseminated across the globe through colonialism and conquest. And it is colibri that inspired Carl Linneaus to give the Ruby-throats the species name colubris when he first formally classified them in 1758. Some other charming monikers from around the world include: beija-flores (“flower kisser” in Portuguese), picaflor (“flower stabber” in Spanish), and many version of “bee bird” or “fly bird” such as oiseau-mouche in French. 

But of course hummingbirds, being native to the Americas, were well known to the indigenous peoples of the continents long before European colonization. Huitzitzilin to the Aztecs (who depicted their warrior deity, Huitzilopochtli, as a hummingbird), q’enti to the Quechua, walela to the Cherokee. American ethnographer James Mooney lived among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in western North Carolina and worked with Cherokee translator and cultural historian, Will West Long, to record Myths of the Cherokee published in 1902 as part of the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for the Smithsonian Institution. In it, Mooney recounts two hummingbird myths. One, a story of how the tobacco plant had been stolen from the people by a mean-spirited goose, and only the hummingbird was swift and clever enough to retrieve it. In the second, a hummingbird and a crane race to win the hand of a beautiful woman, the speedy hummingbird expecting to win handily, only to be surprised that the crane’s stamina outlasts his and the crane wins the race. 

While hummingbirds were unknown to the Europeans by the time of colonization, emerging research suggests the earliest hummingbird ancestors once lived in Europe themselves. Newly discovered fossils in Germany complicate our understanding of hummingbird evolution. Researchers believe hummingbirds may have first separated from their closest living relatives, the swifts, around 42 million years ago in Eurasia. From there, they seem to have dispersed across Europe and Asia, eventually crossing the land bridge that once existed between Russia and Alaska. Once in the Americas, hummingbirds thrived with little competition, and diversified spectacularly, evolving around 22 million years ago into the modern birds we know today, which is one of the most diverse avian families, with about 350 species across two continents. 

Next month, we will return to the work at hand, exploring our Ruby-throats’ autumnal activities. In the meantime, for those of us who will not be spending our winter in more tropical climes, may we enjoy the waning days of summer, hot as they may be. 

Blog post written by Brittany Richards for the Wake Audubon Society.