.. just until a few years back. Looking at hummingbirds videos in slo-mo taken thanks to some amazing cameras, I started thinking: these birds beauty couldn’t have been captured in any work of art until recently. From Wikipedia:

They are known as hummingbirds because of the humming sound created by their beating wings which flap at high frequencies audible to humans. They hover in mid-air at rapid wing-flapping rates, which vary from around 12 beats per second in the largest species, to in excess of 80 in some of the smallest. Of those species that have been measured in wind tunnels, their top speed exceeds 15 m/s (54 km/h; 34 mph) and some species can dive at speeds in excess of 22 m/s (79 km/h; 49 mph)

They’re measuring their speed in wind tunnels! Imagine an artist trying to remember what that looks like after seeing it for about 2 seconds.. 🙂

After a quick research it seems that’s in fact the case for most exotic animals – This is how an Italian artist drew an elephant around 1440:

Long story short, I consider myself very lucky to be able to observe nature’s beauty from a sofa. Here’s a black and white hummingbird!