User:Keh18022/Bee hummingbird

The bee hummingbird, zunzuncito or Helena hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) is a species of hummingbird which is the world's smallest bird. It is native and endemic to the main island of Cuba.

Description
The male Bee Hummingbird typically makes calls in flight or from high perches making a mixture of high pitched warbling phrases and a drawn-out buzzy note.

'''The Bee Hummingbird is a diurnal animal and because of its miniscule size it has a higher metabolic rate and heat loss is also generally higher. These traits call for torpor, which includes a state of anabiosis, that causes the body temperature of the Bee Hummingbird to drop to 18 degrees Celsius for one third of the year. During the remaining period of the year the Bee Hummingbird has an average body temperature of 40 degrees Celsius.'''

Diet
The bee hummingbird has been reported to visit 10 plant species, nine of them native to Cuba. These flowers include  Hamelia patens (Rubiaceae), Chrysobalanus icaco (Chrysobalanaceae), Pavonia paludicola (Malvaceae), Forsteronia corymbosa (Apocynaceae), Lysiloma latisiliquum (Mimosaceae), Turnera ulmifolia (Passifloraceae), Clerodendrum aculeatum (Verbenaceae), Tournefortia hirsutissima (Boraginaceae), and Cissus obovata (Vitaceae) and Antigonon leptopus (Polygonaceae), '''the only species not native to cuba on the list. Of all these species 9 of them are visited by the Cuban Emerald, the only other native cuban hummingbird, as well as bees, butterflies and other insects'''. They occasionally eat insects and spiders. In a typical day, bee hummingbirds will consume up to half their body weight in food.

'''Most of the plants that the Bee Hummingbird uses have generalized pollination systems as opposed to plants with traditional ornithophiles syndrome that are generally used and adapted to hummingbirds. This is inline with plant species visited by hummingbirds from Trinidad and Tobago and other islands in the West Indies . Generalized pollination system attract more than one type of pollinator while plants with ornithophiles syndrome are evolved to be pollinated by birds with long tubular structures.'''

Habitat and Distribution
The bee hummingbird is endemic to the entire Cuban archipelago, including the main island of Cuba and the Isla de la Juventud in the West Indies. Its population is fragmented, found in Cuba's mogote areas in Pinar del Rio province and more commonly in Zapata Swamp (Matanzas province) and in eastern Cuba, with reference localities in Alexander Humboldt National Park and Baitiquirí Ecological Reserve (Guantanamo province) and Gibara and Sierra Cristal (Holguin province). The hummingbird has also been observed in the Nipe plateau of eastern Cuba, a forestry, mining and coffee growing zone.

Breeding
The bee hummingbird's breeding season is March–June. They lay up to two eggs at a time. Males in the “bee” hummingbird clade court females with sound from tail‐feathers, which flutter during display dives.

Using bits of cobwebs, bark, and lichen, the female builds a cup-shaped nest that is about 2.5 cm (0.98 in) in diameter. Nests have been built on single clothespins.[citation needed] She lines the nest with soft plant fibers and there she will lay her eggs. She alone incubates the eggs and raises the young.

'The bee hummingbird prefers to nests in adult, leafy Jucaro (Bucida buceras) and juvenile Ocuje (Calophyllum antillanum)'' but has been found in other trees. It has been observed that after completion of the nest the eggs are in incubation for 21 days followed by 2 days of hatching and 18 days of care by the mother. The last 4-5 days of care involve the juvenile hummingbirds practicing flight and end with the bee hummingbird leaving the nest to never return. The nests are only used once and then destroyed by rain and other natural forces. '''