Hummingbird Yoga

Before I raised four orphaned ruby-throats from Day 12 through adulthood, I admit that I thought of hummingbirds differently than I thought of larger birds. 

As if a rufous-tailed hummingbird, being 1/4 the size of a Passerini tanager, would somehow have but a quarter of its presence, a quarter of its character, a quarter of its brains.

Being the ultimate advocate for bird intelligence, I can't say why I harbored this prejudice for so long, but I suspect it's one many people unconsciously cultivate. Hummingbirds zip around so fast, and are insect-like and bizarre in aspect. I had trouble believing they were real birds, and so I had trouble connecting with them. I guess I assumed their brains were a bit insectile, as well; that they might not be capable of making the kind of connections, having the kind of synthetic intelligence that "real" birds do.

When I raised them, a story told in The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds,

I realized that hummingbirds are every bit as intelligent and sentient as other birds. They are 110% BIRD. Boiled down to the essence of birdiness. Smart, opportunistic, fierce. Intense.

So when a bronze-tailed plumeleteer in Cope's garden not far from Limon, Costa Rica, stopped for a few minutes of peaceful hummingbird yoga, I was all eyes. Not just for his radiant teal gorget and bronzy forked tail, but for his sunbathing behavior.

We bring our tiny coral-pink foot up over our very long wing

  and groom our forehead and cheek.

We assume an upright stance, and let our aquamarine throat expand.

As we feel the sun penetrating our feathers, heating up our soul, we begin to keel over.

We allow the heat to reach our inner being

and we raise our feathers and hold our tiny self in Sun Salutation

until our skinny red turkeylike neck shows. Part of the exercise is embracing our vulnerability.

We hold this position for a long time, then slowly raise ourself high and proud again. 

Renewed in body and spirit, we look around for someone to pierce.

Back at it, the business of being a hummingbird.

Others shared his spotlight.

A long-billed hermit. Hermits swoop in headlong, seemingly flying sideways in a perpetual dive, those ribbonlike white tail streamers fluttering behind them, swoopy and thrilling. I've rarely seen them perch.

But in full hover, they look like strange angels. I like this moody shot, the catch light in her eye, the feet held like a prayer, or a plea.

It's extremely difficult to capture sharp images of these birds in flight. My camera fires and fires; it focuses on the vegetation behind the dimly-lit subject. I laugh and mutter and cuss, and one out of every two dozen shots might pan out. All hail digital, where everything is free and the delete button gets warm to the touch.

 The closest thing to which I can compare shooting hummingbirds is playing a very intense video game, but for real. Addictive and very, very fun.

You who practice yoga and play video games will probably have already figured out that I do neither.

But I can imagine it.

One of the prizes of the day? A female green-breasted mango who zipped in at warp speed, with a surprise Indian blanket for a tail. 

Oh my, oh my oh my. Can't you stay awhile?

 Capturing them: the path to a happy madness.

Forget those little bug-birds now.

 Focus on me, a splendid bull Montezuma oropendola, twice the size and weight of my several mates.

My malar wattles, engorged; my cheeks electric blue.

See me, and you've seen a real bird. 

Thanks again to the wonderful artist Cope, who has made this little paradise for birds and bird photographers alike.

Serendipity Drives the Magic Bus: A Day at Cope's

Serendipity was our best traveling companion on this trip. She had an excellent assistant in guide Mario Cordoba, who is always ready with a Plan B should things fall through. We had been scheduled to visit a butterfly garden that also attracts myriad hummingbirds, but upon arriving there, we found the caretaker nowhere in evidence, and a rather large mastiff cross barking vigorously, circling our bus, and eager to show us the door. 

I briefly considered unleashing my Dog Whisperer charm on him, but I knew Mario would never let me off the bus. 

It didn't take Mario long to deploy Plan B, and we headed for Cope's place. (say it CO-pay.)

The first bird who greeted us was an olive-backed euphonia, busy building a nest in an old oropendola nest Cope had hung from an eave. A very good omen in this peaceable kingdom. 

Cope is an extraordinary natural history artist who started out by making death studies of road and window-killed birds and animals. Hey, I did that too, for years. I felt an immediate kinship with him, which deepened as I looked at his gorgeous pencil and watercolor studies. He's a great photographer as well, and he knows where all the cool stuff lives.

He's created a little paradise for birds and birdwatchers in his yard. Simple, but highly effective. He's got a two-sided blind in which people can sit quietly and observe hummingbirds, oropendolas, tanagers, finches, even rails! at the feeders just outside in a small clearing. He's made pools and plantings and snags and perches that offer perfect photo-ops. Here's part of our happy group in the lean-to.

 Photo by Jenny Minton

Here, we got great shots and looks at some elusive species, including blue-chested hummingbird

crowned wood-nymph (this is a little hen)

violet-headed hummingbird (why do they call it that?)

 the ubiquitous rufous-tailed hummingbird

 here feeding naturally...

Cope brings a reptile guide for Betty.

 photo by Jenny Minton

I think we all melted simultaneously when Cope's beautiful, poised daughter Alina emerged from the studio with a gray snail-eater coiled companionably in her little hand.

photo by Jenny Minton

This slender but powerfully-jawed snake was placid and calm. I'm guessing it uses those strong boxy jaws to crush snail shells before swallowing them?

Meanwhile, the Passerini tanagers dazzled us at the banana feeder. Their rumps are so brilliant that they cornfuse my camera. It doesn't know what to do with a red that bright.

Cope's place is the best I've found for photographing the exquisite white-necked jacobin, who always reminds me of an elegantly dressed waiter.

Hummingbird eyelids work like human eyelids, closing from the top down instead of the bottom up like most birds'.

But their tongues don't...their long hyoid bones wrap around the back of their skull and shoot the tongue way out beyond the bill tip.

All the while, a gorgeous but comical gray-necked wood rail danced on and offstage, making me laugh with delight every time it appeared. I don't know by what provenance we have been given a wood rail that's not in the least shy and incredibly gaudy, with lipstick-pink legs and the most marvelous shading from gray to rust to olive to ebony...but we have, and I love them.

 It curtsied in the most amusing way on its hot lava legs

 and I wondered what the world would do without birds in all their splendor. Surely, as Roger Peterson said, they are "the most vivid expression of life."

It was at Cope's that I made my favorite hummingbird image of the trip--a blue-chested hummingbird pausing in mid-air for a split second that will enchant me forever. 

 Thank you, Cope, for all the beauty you have packed into your backyard sanctuary. An inspiration and lesson for us all. Visit him when you're in Costa Rica!

Cope Arte on Facebook

Cope Arte's website