- The hummingbird spends many of its hours feeding on the nectar of flowers, moving from blossom to blossom.

The hummingbird, like other living organisms, needs energy in order to exist.

But the hummingbird for its size consumes huge amounts of energy.

If you were to expand energy at the same rate as this organism, you might have to eat more than twice your weight in food every day.

The hummingbird wings beat about 55 times each second.

When slowed down, the wings can be seen sculling back and forth.

This allows the hummingbird to remain in place while it feeds.

Even the busy, rapidly feeding hummingbird will take a periodic rest from its feeding activity.

During this time, the bird keeps a constant watch on its surroundings.

The hummingbird usually doesn't rest for too long.

Its body processes require energy and the bird must find and secure food during most of the daylight hours.

Much of the energy it finds will be used to move its wings in flight.

But this bird, like other organisms, uses energy in a variety of life processes.

The nectar from flowers is the primary fuel that makes it possible.

Yet each organism must have a source of energy.

Once an organism finds food or energy, it often secures enough to take care of existing needs and possibly replenish food reserves.

Regardless of the type of organism, energy is used for life processes.

And in the case of animals, a great deal may be used in a variety of movement.

Throughout nature, there are a number of ways that organisms move about.

Movement may serve specific purposes, but in each instance, movement consumes energy.

The energy for movement and other life requirements can be found within each organism within the individual cell in the form of microscopic bodies called mitochondria.

Mitochondria release the energy of life through respiration.

This is where the energy in food is released chemically, converted to a form that can drive the life processes.

This all happens in these oval-shaped mitochondria within the individual cells of living organisms on an incredibly small scale.

So in one perspective, the honeybee can be thought to be gathering food or energy for its microscopic mitochondria, which will ultimately convert it into a form of energy that sustains the bee's existence.

But not all energy is immediately consumed.

Some is stored.

For example, energy may be stored in the wax of the beehive.

This can later be used by bees or by others that may invade the colony.

The wax moth larvae used the bee's wax as food.

They too will consume some of this energy in movement, growth, and other activities.

Wax moth larvae depend on stored food reserves.

Other creatures may specifically spend part of each year storing food.

Geese and other migrating birds feed extensively prior to and during their migratory journeys.

Their ability to survive depends in part on their ability to store food, which will be consumed in large amounts during flight.

Birds are not alone in storing food as fall and winter approach.

A number of other organisms, including plants, are also busy storing energy while it is available.

While plants obtain their energy through photosynthesis, the energy produced in the leaves sometimes moves underground into large roots.

The sweet potato plant may produce a number of thick roots that contain large supplies of stored energy.

The food reserves here will later fuel future growth.

The stored food may remain largely unused for a number of months.

This storage roots can be found in a number of plants.

They often reach deep into the earth.

And while they may appear lifeless, the energy within such roots will serve a specific purpose when conditions are suitable for growth.

The stored food in the roots, as well as food reserves stored in the common potato, provide energy for new growth.

The sprouts.

The new plants initially lack a means to produce their own energy.

Until they develop chlorophyll and the ability to produce food.

These plants are totally dependent on the stored food that was previously set aside.

So they literally borrow from the reserves until they can manufacture their own food.

The stored energy in plants is often found in special storage cells manufactured in some plants by the thousands.

Such stored energy may be in various plant parts, and it's often in the form of a starch.

Basically chemical combinations of sugars produced in photosynthesis.

While plants often store energy in the form of starch, energy may also be locked up chemically in other substances, such as oils.

In animals, there may be fats as well as oils that hold large amounts of energy.

These larger molecules contain a great deal of energy that can be called on at a later time.

So there are a number of chemical possibilities where energy can be temporarily set aside until needed.

These chemicals may be stored in various places and organisms, but one site where the energy from photosynthesis may be found is in the seeds.

Plants channel energy into seed production.

The stored energy that plants distribute in seeds provides a portion of energy that can start out the next generation.

A plant may produce large numbers of seeds, each having a supply of stored food.

In late summer and early fall, plants often send large amounts of energy into seed production.

Energy that originally came from the green leaves and the photosynthesis process.

Leaves of plants produce energy that will go into a variety of seed shapes and forms in nature.

For the grasses and smaller plants that may live only one year, these seeds are essential for continued survival of the species.

So some plants that will not live through winter produce seeds with enough stored energy that will survive.

Larger plants that encounter winters year after year have adapted to surviving the harsh conditions.

As colder temperatures approach, many of the trees have gradually lost their leaves.

Once the leaves have gone, these plants rely on stored food reserves.

The trees with the barren limbs go into an inactive state as the environment slowly changes to the winter conditions.

The trees appear desolate.

And despite the leaves that have fallen from many of the trees in the forest, these huge plants are alive, although there is little growth during this time of inactivity.

The trees are also prepared to survive the winter in other ways.

The buds that will bring new growth in spring are protected during winter by thick outer scales.

Meanwhile, as temperatures continue to grow colder, other life forms struggle to exist, depending a great deal on stored reserves gathered when food was more plentiful.

Many hours may be spent sleeping or resting or searching for food that remains.

Life seems to have prepared for these conditions.

With the falling sleet and freezing rain, life in the forest depends more than ever on food reserves stockpiled in warmer months.

Those trees that survive the freezing rain and sleet may have their limbs coated with frozen water.

Such freezing conditions could severely damage some plants.

Yet many of the plants and animals manage to survive these times when there is neither abundant energy to warm the earth nor abundant food energy readily available.

Yet it is thought for some plants that these winter conditions may be essential in order to prepare for spring.

Even when the sleet and freezing rain changed to snow and the blanket may cover much of the surroundings, life continues.

The snow may cover sources of food for animals and food reserves may become more essential for those living things existing in this environment.

Yet for those organisms that previously set aside enough food reserves, the winter snows are less threatening when they cover the decaying leaves on the forest floor.

For this is a time of inactivity, a dependence on stored food that will mean new and continued life when spring returns to the community of living things.