Little Blake Lake

It might not be snowing and the temperatures are still moderate for the last day in November, but I still have winter longings to be at Sidetrack. When I saw this article, I thought even more about sitting on the deck and having tiny birds zooming around above my head.

It's a fascinating bit of trivia.

How Hummingbirds Get Their Nectar With Tiny ‘Straws’

It is harder to suck liquid through a thin straw than a wider one because of viscosity.

The answer is that the hummingbird is taking advantage of the forces of surface tension...

For the latest research, John W. M. Bush, a professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his co-workers found that when a hummingbird stuck its tongue into a flower, the tongue, about three-quarters of an inch long, curled up into a cylinder just one twenty-fifth of an inch in diameter because of surface tension.

“The hummingbird’s tongue looks like a straw with a slot cut in it,” Dr. Bush said.

Also because of the surface tension, the slot in the cylindrical tongue zips closed, beginning from the tip. The nectar is drawn upward, and the cylinder fills.

The hummingbird then scrapes its tongue clean and swallows. Amazingly, it repeats this process 20 times a second as it feeds...

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