HUMMINGBIRDS
Bible Study / Daily Devotional
Daily Devotions
Average reading time is about 6 minutes
AN AMAZING FACT: There are over 300 kinds of hummingbirds in the world, which come in every color of the rainbow. The smallest is the bee hummingbird from Cuba—the smallest bird in the world. It is only two inches long and weighs less than a dime at .07 ounces. The largest is the giant hummingbird that can reach a whopping eight inches in length.
Even though hummingbirds are small in size, they have enormous appetites. Hummingbirds feed often and must consume more than their body weight in food each day. (I would have to eat more than 160 pounds of food a day to do that!) In order to obtain enough nectar, they feed every 10 or 15 minutes from dawn until dusk. Hummingbirds consume between four and seven calories a day. That may not seem like much, but if humans (who normally eat 3,500 calories a day) had the metabolism of a hummingbird, they would have to consume approximately 155,000 calories a day! The hummingbird’s copious need for calories is because of their extremely high heart rate and metabolism.

Hummingbirds are not very social animals, which is why you never see them flying in flocks. In fact, males and females live apart until breeding season. After mating, the female is on her own to build the nest and raise her young. The females usually lay one or two very tiny eggs about the size of a pinto bean. When they hatch out, these tiny babies are very vulnerable to predators, including large insects!

When it comes to flying, nobody does it better than a hummingbird. Like a helicopter, it can go up, down, sideways, backwards, and even upside down! This is because most of its wing is made of hand bones instead of arm bones like other birds. The ruby-throated hummingbird, for example, is reported to have a wing rate of 70 beats per second, or 4,200 per minute. Hummingbirds are such good fliers that most of them never walk more than two inches, and they can terrorize birds 10 times their own size with their acrobatic skill. Hummingbirds are also amazing hunters of insects, frequently plucking mosquitoes, gnats, and fruit flies right out of the air while hovering.

Did you know that the Bible teaches that angels do not travel at the speed of sound or even at the speed of light but rather at the speed of thought? The angel Gabriel came to Daniel from heaven while he was still praying!
KEY BIBLE TEXTS
Yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation. Daniel 9:21

AMAZING ORCHIDS
Bible Study / Daily Devotional
Daily Devotional
Average reading time is about 5 and a half minutes
AN AMAZING FACT: Orchids are truly amazing flowers! They represent the largest family of flowering plants in the world and come in a kaleidoscope of diversity. There are about 25,000 species of orchids. That’s four times as many species as mammals, and twice as many as birds. Orchids grow on six continents in almost every habitat ranging from deserts to swamps, alpine pastures to polar tundra, but most species are found in the wet tropical forests. If you like vanilla, you actually like orchids. The vanilla stick is simply the fermented and blackened pod of an orchid found in Mexico.

Like many plants, orchids need outside help to pollinate and reproduce. Because few orchids offer nectar or edible pollen, they must resort to a broad array of very creative aromatic, visual, or tactile tricks to attract potential pollinators. Some orchid petals imitate bees or butterflies; other can look like lizards, frogs, or even hummingbirds. Others mimic male bees in flight, hoping to incite territorial combat that will result in pollination.

The flowers may produce attractive odors to lure bees with sweet promise by copying the appearance and scent of nectar-producing flowers, while others, as in the case of a Dracula orchid, attract gnats or flies by producing an array of nasty smells like fungus, rotten meat, or even dirty diapers.

Some orchids promise shelter, with petals in the shape of insect burrows. The bugs crawl in for protection and come out with pollen. Certain orchids accomplish pollination by mimicking the appearance, scent, and even the feel of a particular female bee. When a male bee jostles the orchid’s column, two yellow sacs packed with pollen are stuck to his back with quick-drying glue. Then there’s the catasetum (kat-uh-see-tum) orchids, which slingshot a sticky pollen-loaded bundle on any hapless insect that bumps the trigger.

Obviously, these flowers don’t see or hear, and they’re unaware of their own colors and patterns. Mindless flowers could never develop this astounding arsenal of pollinating methods by themselves. It took the hand of an intelligent Creator-God who loves and cares for all of His creations. In the words of Psalm 104:24: “O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all.”
KEY BIBLE TEXTS
Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Luke 12:27

THE GOLIATH BIRD-EATING SPIDER
Bible Study / Daily Devotional
Daily Devotional
Average reading time is about 6 minutes
AN AMAZING FACT: The Goliath bird-eating spider, found in the jungles of Suriname and French Guiana, is (by mass) the largest spider in the world. This monster arachnid belongs to the tarantula family. It was named by explorers who witnessed one eating a hummingbird.

So how big are they? In 1965, a male specimen was collected that had a leg span over 11 inches! That’s the size of a dinner plate! In addition, these amazing tarantulas also hold the record for the longest-lived spiders. One female specimen lived for an estimated 27 years. This same family of spiders holds the record for the heaviest spider. Another female collected in Suriname weighed a whopping 4.3 ounces. She was also sporting fangs 1 inch long. With creatures like this crawling around, you can understand why many people fear spiders more than death!

The goliath bird-eating spider is pretty harmless to humans, as are most species of tarantulas. They do carry venom in their fangs and have been occasionally known to bite people when threatened, but the venom just causes swelling and mild pain, something like a wasp sting. Most of the time, if a tarantula is forced to bite a human in self-defense they don’t even inject venom—it’s what is known as a “dry bite.”

Strangely, the goliath bird-eating spider can do the most damage to people from the back side. Their abdomens are covered with twisted fiberglass-like hairs filled with microscopic hooks. If forced to defend itself, the tarantula may flick these fine vexing hairs off their tail section with their hind legs. The fuzzy hairs can become embedded in the flesh of anything close by and are extremely irritating to skin. They are especially troublesome if they get into delicate mucous membranes around eyes and mouth. So while most people are worried about the giant fangs in the front, it is really the little hairs in the back that do the most harm.

The Bible teaches the devil also does more damage through the little invisible things. Just as a spider can be found anywhere, even in the palace of a king, so the devil does not limit his work to certain places. Though we cannot see Satan, he roams everywhere on our planet. “And the Lord said to Satan, ‘From where do you come?’ So Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it’” (Job 1:7).
KEY BIBLE TEXTS
The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces. Proverbs 30:28

EATING LIKE A BIRD
Bible Study / Daily Devotional
Daily Devotional
Average reading time is about 5 and a half minutes
AN AMAZING FACT: You have probably heard the expression before: “he [or she] eats like a bird.” Well, you might think again before using this phrase to describe a petite eater. A study of bird eating habits has exploded the popular idea that all birds have tiny appetites. For example, it showed the average parakeet eats nearly 100 times its own weight annually in seed, cuttle-bone, gravel, and water.

Because the parakeet weighs only about 3 ounces, this means that it consumes about eight pounds of food a year. To eat at the same rate, a man would have to devour some 16,000 pounds of food annually instead of his normal consumption of 1,300 pounds. Daily “bird rations” for a man would consist of about 45 pounds of food. An average hummingbird eats half its weight in sugar each day. Just imagine if a 100-pound woman ate 50 pounds of sugar a day. (On second thought … let’s not imagine that.)

Of course, there are always those exceptions of people who, at times, can even eat more than a bird. Take, for example, the famous athlete Milo of Crotona, a giant of a man who lived in ancient Greece. Milo was a top wrestler, crowned six times at the Olympic Games for wrestling, and was famous throughout the civilized world for his feats of strength—such as carrying an ox on his shoulders through the stadium at Olympia. This powerful man seemed always hungry, and devoured everything in sight. Once, when he was unusually hungry, he outdid himself and captured the world’s record for big eating. Milo managed to polish off a whole calf weighing 150 pounds in one day.

Unfortunately, modern medical research indicates more and more people are eating like birds. Harmful high-fat and high-calorie diets reign in most households. But Scripture tells us the “drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty …” (Proverbs 23:21), and gives this caution: “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Ultimately, we are responsible to God for the way we treat our bodies. “Eating like a bird” is something we should all try to avoid!
KEY BIBLE TEXTS
Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. 1 Corinthians 6:13