How Do Hummingbirds Avoid “Pissing Themselves To Death”?

For the last week or so I’ve been photographing hummingbirds in my yard almost exclusively – mostly female and juvenile Black-chinned Hummingbirds. I’ve been alternating between shooting them at the trumpet vine on the side of my house and the canna lilies in my garden.

 

The light is often marginal at both locations so very often I don’t have enough shutter speed to freeze their wings, but I can live with that as long as most of the rest of the bird is acceptably sharp.

Of course I enjoy the flowers in my photos too but sometimes I grow a little weary of all the bright colors so…

 

 

I appreciate getting a shot like this once in a awhile. I like the little splash of greenish iridescence at the top of her head.

 

 

This hummer worked this flower over for a long time so I figured she was getting a lot of nectar from it.

 

 

But it wasn’t easy to get to. Sometimes almost half of her, including her long bill, disappeared inside the flower.

 

 

But the proof is in the pudding. Several times when she backed out there were drops of nectar at or near the end of her bill. Which makes one wonder, how much nectar do they actually consume? And how do they deal with all the urine it would produce?

 

 

This hummer was feeding on my canna lilies rather than my trumpet vine. When she backed out she realized that her tanks were full so she…

 

 

dumped a load before going back for more.

 

 

Then yesterday morning I captured another hummer peeing. These droplets look brown but that’s only because of colors reflected from the setting. They’re actually perfectly clear.

• Flower nectar averages 20% to 25% sugar. Almost all of the rest is water with only trace amounts of amino acids, proteins, lipids and minerals.
• In order to fuel their sky-high metabolic rate, hummingbirds need to suck down about 80 percent of their body weight in nectar each day. That’s the equivalent of a 150-pound person drinking nearly a hundred 20-ounce Cokes daily—and nectar is often much sweeter than soda.
• So hummingbirds have to get rid of a LOT of water during daytime (without losing electrolytes – their kidneys are adapted to recapturing them before they’re excreted). Hummer urine is up to 99.5% pure water – essentially distilled water.
• But if hummers kept producing dilute urine overnight, they would die of dehydration before morning. To avoid that they shut down their kidneys overnight. To quote ecophysiologist Carlos Martinez del Rio of the University of Wyoming “they go into what, in a human, would be considered acute renal failure. Hummingbirds have to do this, or they would piss themselves to death.”

I know of a 79-year-old bird photographer with an enlarged prostate who is insanely jealous of the ability of hummers to shut down their kidneys during nighttime, which for him would make those highly inconvenient and annoying nocturnal trips to the bathroom unnecessary.

If only…

Ron

 

Postscript:

Yesterday, after taking some of these photos of hummers at my trumpet vine, I forgot to return the chair I’d been sitting on from my dilapidated old wooden deck to its normal home on my patio.

Last evening, after mixing a pre-dinner drink, I prepared to enjoy it on my patio. I opened my back door and before I even took my first stop outside I looked to my right and saw…

 

Hannibal the Cooper’s Hawk looking back at me from the back of my chair only 10′ away. I had one of my cameras with a small lens handy so I got a few photos

 

And of course, he had to shit on my chair before he took off.