• In The Last Word (15 May), the amount of food an 83-kilogram human should eat each day in order to match that consumed by a hummingbird was given as 125 kilograms. This figure was correct. However, the wording of the text suggests the person should eat three times as much food (249 kilograms) as their body weight in order to match the hummingbird, which has to eat three times its own weight before crossing the Gulf of Mexico. This is not the case, because the number of kilojoules contained in 125 kilograms of hamburgers is greater than that contained in the same weight of nectar – the hummingbird’s food. The figures were based on energy consumption, not on total weight of food consumed.
• The captions underneath the illustrations of faces in the feature “The boldest cut” (29 May, p 35) described several of them as a “doner” rather than a “donor”. Those responsible for the error have been kebabbed.
