Though the tiniest of birds, it is also one of the most versitile. But all that comes at a price.

Sometimes called the helicopter bird, the hummingbird is certainly a unique creature. Though between 325 and 340 species of hummingbird have been identified, the average bird only weighs 3 grams and measures less than 4 inches long. They never hum with a Russian accent because they live only in the Americas. The female lays two eggs (the smallest of all bird eggs) which hatch in 14-19 days.
Hummingbirds are most famous for their ability to hover. They do this through rapid wing beating (averaging 20-25 beats per second) and the angle of their wing movement. As a result, they can fly vertically and even backwards, the only bird able to do so. High speed photography proved that 75% of their lift comes from the wing downstroke, and 25% the upstroke.
All this talent comes with a price. Their heart rate can reach as high as 1,260 beats per minute! To provide that much energy requires a high calorie diet. “They also typically consume more than their own weight in food each day, and to do so they must visit hundreds of flowers daily. At any given moment, they are only hours away from starving.” In other words, their ability to hover is used to provide food energy so they can hover! (Fortunately at night they can slow down to an almost comatose rate of 50-180 heart beats/minute.)
How is the hummingbird equipped to take in that much food? The “elongated beak is one of the defining characteristics of the hummingbird, which, with an extendable, bifurcated (split) tongue, has evolved in order to allow the bird to feed upon nectar deep within flowers.” Amazing, isn’t it? The hummingbird ‘evolved in order to.’ Sounds like evolution with a designer’s purpose. And how did it stay alive in the meantime while it is going through thousands of years of evolution? How much simpler it is to believe our Master Creature designed it with purpose in the beginning!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummingbird