Hummingbird Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
82 free Hummingbird trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hummingbirds are the smallest birds alive and among the most extreme animals of any size, and this quiz gets into the numbers: roughly 375 species, wingbeats up to 99 a second, a heart that can hit 1,260 beats a minute, a metabolism that drops to a fifteenth of normal in overnight torpor, and a rufous hummingbird migration from Alaska to Mexico that, measured in body lengths, beats the Arctic tern's. It also covers how they actually work: the figure-of-eight wingstroke that gives lift on the way up as well as down, the forked tongue that pumps nectar rather than sipping it by capillary action, the fourth colour cone that lets them see into the ultraviolet, why they never walk, why they cannot survive on nectar alone, and what to put in a feeder (and not to). Then the birds themselves and their place in culture: Cuba's bee hummingbird, the sword-bill whose beak is longer than its body, Jamaica's doctor bird, the ruby-throat's Gulf crossing, Anna's hummingbird wintering in Vancouver, the Aztec war god Huitzilopochtli and the Nazca Lines. Easy questions ask where hummingbirds live and what they eat; hard ones want licks per second, gene names and clade counts. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on hummingbirds and the species involved, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Our Birds quiz goes wider.
30 of 82 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which aerial trick can hummingbirds pull off that most birds can't?
Fly backwards
Fly backwards: their wings join the body only at the shoulder, letting them fly straight up and down too, and they can even fly upside down.
Q 02Some hummingbirds raise more chicks by nesting close to which birds of prey?
Hawks
Hawks hunt jays, so jays change how they forage near hawk nests, and hummingbirds nesting close by raise more young.
Q 03What is the smallest bird in the world?
The bee hummingbird
The bee hummingbird lives only in Cuba, and besides sipping nectar it catches small insects.
Q 04Hummingbirds detect sugar with a taste receptor that, in humans, senses which taste?
Umami
Umami: birds lack the usual sweet receptor, so hummingbirds rewired the umami one to sense sugar, letting them exploit nectar.
Q 05How do mountain hummingbirds warm up after a night of torpor?
By shivering
By shivering: birds that stay in torpor longer burn off less body weight before morning.
Q 06Which hummingbird migrates about 6,300 km each way between Alaska and its wintering grounds?
The rufous
The rufous breeds farther north than any other hummingbird and loops clockwise, north up the Pacific coast in spring and south along the Rockies.
Q 07Hummingbirds split from which sister group about 42 million years ago?
Swifts and treeswifts
Swifts and treeswifts eat insects; only after the split did hummingbirds evolve a way to taste sugar, which opened up a life on nectar.
Q 08Though hummingbirds now live only in the Americas, their oldest modern-type fossils were found on which continent?
Europe
Europe: those extinct hummingbirds may have helped shape some Asian and African flowers.
Q 09How do hummingbirds get about on their feet?
They shuffle along perches
They shuffle along perches: their legs are too short for walking or hopping, and their feet serve mainly for perching and preening.
Q 10What is the iridescent throat patch of a male hummingbird called?
A gorget
A gorget flashes only at the right angle, so males position themselves to catch the light when showing it off to a potential mate.
Q 11Who raises the chicks in most hummingbird species?
The female
The female: after mating, male and female go their separate ways, leaving her to nest and rear the chicks.
Q 12Hummingbird nests are commonly bound to a branch using what?
Spider webs
Spider webs bind the cup, yet orb-weaver webs sometimes trap hummingbirds.
Q 13Which country has the most hummingbird species, more than 160?
Colombia
Colombia sits on the continent where hummingbirds took off: they reached South America about 22 million years ago and diversified fast.
Dozens of hummingbird species live year-round high in which mountain range?
Q 21Which insect has been seen seizing hummingbirds at garden nectar feeders?
The praying mantis
The praying mantis has company: frogs and roadrunners also catch hummingbirds.
Q 22What shape do a hummingbird's wings trace as it holds still in mid-air?
A figure of eight
A figure of eight, with the downstroke giving most of the lift, overturning the old assumption that both strokes shared it equally, as in insects.
Q 23How does a hummingbird's tongue gather nectar, as high-speed filming revealed?
By trapping and pumping
By trapping and pumping: the tongue's grooves close around nectar and spring back like a pump, overturning the long-held idea that capillary action draws it up.
The Andes
The Andes' thin air suits them because high-altitude species evolved haemoglobin that binds oxygen more tightly.
Q 15Which Old World birds resemble hummingbirds through convergent evolution but are only distantly related?
Sunbirds
Sunbirds are the Old World's nectar-sippers, but they usually perch to feed.
Q 16Which species is the only bird with a beak longer than the rest of its body, excluding its tail?
The sword-billed hummingbird
The sword-billed hummingbird's bill lets it reach nectar deep inside long-tubed passionflowers that other hummingbirds can't get into.
Q 17Hummingbird-pollinated flowers tend to be which colour?
Red
Red petals signal rich nectar to hummingbirds, yet sugar water in a feeder needs no red dye to attract them.
Q 18Which kind of light, invisible to humans, can hummingbirds see?
Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet vision comes from a fourth colour cone, letting them tell apart colour mixes such as UV-green that humans never see.
Q 19Which body of water can a migrating hummingbird cross in one nonstop journey?
The Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico crossing can take up to 20 straight hours, powered by fat the bird stores up before it sets off.
Q 20Which hummingbird did Vancouver voters elect as their official city bird in 2017?
Anna's
Anna's has spread north in recent decades, probably helped by garden flowers and feeders, and now nests as far as British Columbia.
Q 24What goes wrong when honey is used in a hummingbird feeder?
It lets microbes grow fast
It lets microbes grow fast: diluted honey spoils quickly and can breed dangerous fungus, so safe recipes use refined white sugar and water.
Q 25Which Aztec god of war is often depicted as a hummingbird?
Huitzilopochtli
Huitzilopochtli, in legend, told the Aztecs to settle where an eagle perched on a cactus, and that eagle is on Mexico's flag today.
Q 26Which painter's 1940 self-portrait shows a hummingbird hanging from a thorn necklace?
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo painted it after her divorce from Diego Rivera, and her former lover, photographer Nickolas Muray, soon bought it.
Q 27A giant hummingbird is among the animal figures of which ancient desert geoglyphs?
The Nazca Lines
The Nazca Lines were damaged in 2014 when Greenpeace activists laid a banner beside the giant hummingbird.
Q 28Which Caribbean nation shows two hummingbirds on its coat of arms?
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago redesigned its arms in 2025, swapping Christopher Columbus's three ships for a steelpan, the national instrument.
Q 29The 'doctor bird', a streamertail hummingbird, is the national bird of which country?
Jamaica
Jamaica's tourist board promoted a banana 'doctor bird cake' in the late 1960s, and it spread across the American South as hummingbird cake.
Q 30At the bottom of one Californian hummingbird's courtship dive, what makes its loud chirp?
Its tail feathers
Its tail feathers flutter in the rushing air like a flag, settling a debate over whether the dive sound was vocal.