Sydney Goodwill Goodwill is love in action
This 53-minute video is narrated by David Attenborough. It is a rich resource of fascinating information, but it also has spectacular scenery and incredible flight scenes.
This film reveals the remarkable lives of hummingbirds – one of nature’s most fabulous creatures. Everything about them is superb and extreme: highest metabolism, fastest heart beat and most rapid wing beat. This remarkable specialisation has been driven by flowering plants. Everything about hummingbirds has been shaped by this association – and in that relationship the plants provide and the birds work in their service.
The hummingbirds are the plants’ messengers – the key pollinators for 60% of the New World tropical plants. They pollinate plants in extreme climates where insects are unable to fly – like in the high Andean mountains of South America.
Apparently, one species of Hummingbird migrates 1000km across the Gulf of Mexico to Texas each year, yet they arrive in Texas only weighing about 4 grams, which is insufficient weight to survive the journey, so they gorge on nectar from flowers and sugar from feeders to put on extra weight before they set off.
