Male hummingbirds faster than fighter jets?

A hummingbird feeds a stem Gladiolus after an afternoon rain shower July 22, 2006 in Owings, Maryland. (Mark Wilson, Getty Images)

Male hummingbirds can gather up speeds "greater than fighter jets" when they are trying to impress a potential mate.

A U.S.-based researcher has filed the birds' dives on special equipment that catch the full speed of the dive. They were lured into putting on a mating show by stuffed female birds.

In work published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the male hummingbirds reached speeds of almost 400 body lengths per second.

Christopher Clark from the University of California Berkeley filmed the courtship dives of male Anna's hummingbirds on cameras able to capture 500 frames per second.

Clark adds that the birds' top speed was "greater than (that) of a fighter jet with its afterburners on, or the space shuttle during atmospheric re-entry".