February 28, 2026

What bird can fly backwards

Hummingbirds are the only birds proven to fly backwards continuously and on their own.While other birds might flip or adjust their posture under certain conditions, and some bred in captivity may show unusual flying styles, these are fundamentally different from the sustained, self-controlled backward flight of hummingbirds.They don’t only fly forward quickly. They can also hover and move sideways in mid‑air to drink sugar water from feeders.

How Can Hummingbirds Fly Backwards?

Flexible Flight Structure

Hummingbirds have extremely flexible shoulder joints, which allow them to adjust the direction of their wing movement across a wide range of angles. When they need to fly backward, they change how they flap their wings to create a pushing force in the opposite direction.

The position of hummingbird wings in different flight modes

Nan, Yanghai & Peng, Bei & Chen, Leo & McGlinchey, Don. (2019). From Studying Real Hummingbirds to Designing Hummingbird-Like Robots—A Literature Review. IEEE Access. PP. 1-1. 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2939491.

The front edges of hummingbird wings produce tornado-like vortexes that make them capable of hovering. As hummingbirds beat their wings, the vortexes help them hovering on both the forward and backward strokes. During both the forward and backward strokes of their wings, hummingbirds can continuously generate upward lift. This means that, unlike most birds, they do not need to rely on forward speed or a fixed wing position to stay in the air. Instead, by controlling the movement of their wings, they can use the lift produced by the vortexes. This allows them to shift from hovering to backwards directly.

At the same time, hummingbirds have powerful chest muscles and an extremely fast heartbeat，up to 1,260 beats per minute. These provide the strong energy supply.Hummingbirds also flap their wings at remarkably high speeds, which vary widely among different species. Larger hummingbirds, such as the Giant Hummingbird, may flap only about 12 times per second. In contrast, most hummingbirds flap between 50 and 80 times every second!But that is not even the fastest they can go. During a dive, their wings can beat up to 200 times per second, and their speed can exceed about 33 miles per hour.

Is Flying Backwards Beneficial for Hummingbirds?

Flying backwards allows hummingbirds to leave one flower and move directly to the next without turning around. This helps save valuable time and energy during feeding.

In a study by the University of California, scientists placed hummingbirds in a wind tunnel and conducted two types of measurements:

Energy Cost: The birds wore a mask that measured how much oxygen they used while flying. Lower oxygen use meant the flight was more efficient.
Body Movement: High‑speed cameras record their precise body and wing movements during flight.

(A) General setup of the wind tunnel used to study Anna's hummingbirds during backward, forward, and still-air flights via respirometry and high-speed videography.

(B) Photograph of an Anna's hummingbird feeding from the respirometry mask.

Sapir, N. & Dudley, R. (2012). Backward flight in hummingbirds employs unique kinematic adjustments and entails low metabolic cost. Journal of Experimental Biology, 215(20), 3603-3611. doi:10.1242/jeb.073114

The results showed that at the same speed, hummingbirds used a similar amount of oxygen when flying backward compared to flying forward, but about 20% less than when hovering in place. When flying backward, they flapped their wings faster and changed their wing plane, angle, and the timing of their upstroke and downstroke compared to forward flight.

What Allow Hummingbirds to Fly Backwards?

Though hummingbirds may appear delicate, they actually possess a highly specialized set of adaptations that support their ability to switch flight modes with ease.

Hummingbirds Have an Efficient System for Energy Supply and Delivery

To sustain this highly energy-consuming flight, hummingbirds have evolved a remarkable energy supply system. Their hearts are proportionally the largest in the animal kingdom, making up about 2.5% of their body weight. Their hearts can beat over 1,200 times per minute, pumping oxygen continuously throughout their bodies.At the same time, hummingbirds are able to rely almost entirely on recently consumed sucrose to fuel their flight. This means that when you see a hummingbird hovering near a flower and sipping nectar, the sugars it takes in are almost immediately converted into energy for flight. By feeding frequently and directly using the simple sugars they ingest to power hovering, hummingbirds avoid the energy loss that would come from first converting those sugars into fat before oxidizing them. In contrast, mammals can only directly absorb glucose.

Hummingbirds Can Feed Very Quickly

Hummingbirds have extremely high energy demands. On average, a hummingbird can consume food equal to twice its own body weight in a single day. To meet this need, they must feed on nectar from hundreds of flowers and catch thousands of small insects every day.The hummingbird's tongue is key to its ability to gather energy quickly. The tip of the tongue is flat and forked, with fine fringes along the edges. When at rest, the two forks curl together into a tube-like shape. Elastic tissue at the base of the tongue stores and releases energy during extension and retraction, pumping nectar into the mouth.A hummingbird extends and retracts its tongue about 13 times per second. As the tongue extends, the forked tip flattens and spreads out to collect nectar, then quickly pulls back into the mouth.

Rico-Guevara, A. and Rubega, M.A. (2011) 'The hummingbird tongue is a fluid trap, not a capillary tube', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

(A) The yellow area in this diagram represents the hummingbird’s tongue, showing how it enters a flower to collect nectar.

(B) This side-view photo shows the tongue of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird. You can clearly see how the tip extends from the beak.

(C) The overall shape of the tongue. This top-down view displays the full shape and structure of the tongue: it is quite long and slender. Two grooves run along its surface. The tip, about 6 millimeters long, has many fine, fringe-like structures along its edges.

(D) Cross-sectional view of the tongue tip under magnification.

The green arrow indicates where the cross-section is taken.

Black lines help match the structures in images (C) and (D).

It is especially notable that the arrangement of internal supporting structures changes from the grooved section toward the very tip of the tongue.

References

https://www.birdsandblooms.com/birding/attracting-hummingbirds/can-hummingbirds-even-fly-backwards/https://www.birdsandblooms.com/birding/attracting-hummingbirds/hummingbird-anatomy/https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/birds/facts-about-hummingbirdshttps://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/215/20/3603/11039/Backward-flight-in-hummingbirds-employs-uniquehttps://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=bio_fachttps://sicb.org/abstracts/glucose-fructose-and-sucrose-use-in-hovering-hummingbirds/https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014FuEco..28..589Chttps://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1016944108