Allen’s Hummingbird — Zumbador de Allen (Selasphorus rufus)

Almost everything about hummingbirds is amazing. Their dazzling iridescent colors or their long slender bills which probe flowers for nectar, with little competition from other birds. They have a tiny crop for storing food which literally keeps them alive overnight, and they have the ability to endure cold weather by becoming dormant. Just as hummingbirds depend on blooming flowers for nectar, so do these flowers depend on hummingbirds for pollination. These tiny, 3+-ounce birds migrate from South America up the coast of California, where they breed from January through April, often raising two broods in one season (double clutching). Consider this:

In their swift, darting flight, sudden aerial stops and starts, and general elusiveness on the wing, hummingbirds not only hover, fly backward, and shift sideways, but can also fly straight up and down. When hovering, by rotating the shoulder joint (most other birds fly with the “hand” part of the wing — from the wrist out) they turn the wings completely over on the backstroke as well as on the forestroke, which permits fore part of the wings to cut the air on the backstroke as well as the forestroke; this checks the tendency to move forward or backward and the bird hangs poised in the air. Hummingbirds are living helicopters.

— Terres, John K., The Audubon Encyclopedia of North American Birds (1980), p. 541