English: Archilochus colubris (Linnaeus, 1758) - ruby-throated hummingbird skeleton (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA).

The hummingbirds (Family Trochilidae) are small to very small birds occurring only in the New World, mostly in tropical habitats. Their flight involves extremely rapid wing beats, resulting in a buzzing or humming sound. They feed on flower nectar and insects. Nectar is obtained by hovering and inserting long, needle-like bills into flowers. Most adult males have a set of colorful, iridescent throat feathers called a gorget. Over 330 species of hummingbirds are known in the Holocene.

Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Trochiliformes, Trochilidae

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Birds are small to large, warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered, bipedal vertebrates capable of powered flight (although some are secondarily flightless). Many scientists characterize birds as dinosaurs, but this is consequence of the physical structure of evolutionary diagrams. Birds aren’t dinosaurs. They’re birds. The logic & rationale that some use to justify statements such as “birds are dinosaurs” is the same logic & rationale that results in saying “vertebrates are echinoderms”. Well, no one says the latter. No one should say the former, either.

However, birds are evolutionarily derived from theropod dinosaurs. Birds first appeared in the Triassic or Jurassic, depending on which avian paleontologist you ask. They inhabit a wide variety of terrestrial and surface marine environments, and exhibit considerable variation in behaviors and diets.