h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

These are all tiny jewels of birds:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2014/04/12/hummingbirds-are-ready-for-their-close-ups-in-a-gallery-of-life-size-images.html#fa46b1d3-71ec-418d-80af-dc0732d18a16

Thanks a lot Elektra! They are exquisitely lovely, but as always I am greatly distressed to hear about them even just slightly decreasing in number!

Still no idea why hummingbirds went extinct in Europe. The glaciation, at its peak, still didn't cover southern Europe or much of Eastern Europe. And there would have been lots of suitable habitat in Africa and Asia even at the glacial peak. Being birds, they could have simply moved southward towards warmer climes. Consider today, where some hummingbirds go as far north as Canada, but move south for the winter, because they can fly very well! So there must have been something else ... also, I think the extinction in Eurasia happened well before the Pleistocene epoch (the onset of the ice ages).