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All hummingbirds are small, and many are minute. Even the largest, the giant hummingbird (Patagona gigas) of western South America, is only about 20 cm (8 inches) long, with a body weight of about 20 g (2/3 ounce), less than that of most sparrows. The smallest species, the bee hummingbird (Mellisuga, sometimes Calypte, helenae) of Cuba and the Isle of Pines, measures slightly more than 5.5 cm, of which the bill and tail make up about half. Weighing about 2 g, this species is the smallest living bird and ranks with the pygmy shrews as the smallest of warm-blooded vertebrates.

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Hummingbirds have compact, strongly muscled bodies and rather long, bladelike wings that, unlike the wings of other birds, articulate (connect) to the body only from the shoulder joint. The architecture of the wing permits hummingbirds to fly not only forward but also straight up and down, sideways, and backward and to hover in front of flowers as they obtain nectar and insects from them. The rate at which a hummingbird beats its wings is the same during directional and hovering flight. The ruby-throated hummingbird has a wing-beat rate of about 70 per second in the male and about 50 per second in the female.

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The hummingbird's body feathers are sparse and often strongly metallic and rather scalelike in appearance. The sexes are alike in appearance in a few species but are different in most species; males of the latter species display a variety of brilliance and ornamentation rivaled only by birds-of-paradise and certain pheasants.

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The hummingbird's bill, which is adapted for securing nectar from certain types of flowers, is usually rather long and always slender . The bill is slightly downcurved in many species.

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Most of the species that have been adequately studied do not show pair-bond formation. In the violet-ears (Colibri) and a few others, pair bonds are formed, and both sexes assume parental duties. In the majority of other species, the male defends a territory, where he displays in flight to passing females with swoops, dashes, and sudden stops and starts. Often he hovers in front of the female, oriented so that the light reflects the colour of his gorget. Most hummingbirds, especially the smaller species, have scratchy, twittering, or squeaky songs. In their U-shaped display flights, however, the wings often produce humming, hissing, or popping sounds, which apparently function much as do the songs of other birds. In many species the tail feathers produce the sounds.

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The hummingbird's nest is a tiny cup of plant fibres, spider webs, lichens, and moss that is attached to a branch, a forked twig, a large leaf, or a rock ledge.

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The two elliptical white eggs (rarely, one) are the smallest laid by any bird, although, proportionately, they are equal to about 10 percent of the female's body weight. They are incubated for about 15 to 20 days. The young, hatched blind and virtually naked, are fed by regurgitation and fledge in about three weeks; the time from laying to fledging apparently is correlated with food supply.