Photographing Hummingbirds

Here's The Situation at Toro Amarillo Hummingbird Garden. Lots of feeders hanging everywhere. Birds waiting their turns, birds feeding on the abundant plantings.

You can take photos of birds visiting feeders, but in the end, they're photos of a magical bird sitting on a much less than magical piece of red plastic.

So upon arriving at any hummingbird garden, I go all googly eyed like everybody else, but I wait to photograph any birds until I figure out where they're hanging out when they're not at the feeders.

The black-bellied hummingbird fascinated me. I searched in vain for any color on its front. Nope. This bird is like yin to every other hummer's yang. 

It's the ultimate black. Just black. None blacker. And a cool little crew-cut flattop hairdo that captivated me. Kind of a concept bird.

There's a very nice bit of copper in its secondaries and the base of its primaries that flashes in flight, and the requisite metallic green on its back. And a huge dash of white in the tail, always a surprise in any hummingbird. 

The endemic coppery-headed emerald was here, too, showing its coppery tail, which confused me more than once. With 53 species of hummingbirds in Costa Rica, I figured there must be a coppery-tailed emerald out there somewhere. Brain scramble is a common problem when birding here.

We wound up with a trip total of 26 hummingbird species, which was pretty awesome. We could easily have billed this trip solely as a hummingbird safari, but there was oh so much more.

 One of the 26 was the green-crowned brilliant.

Brilliants remind me of little dragons coated in glittering mail.

Lights off...

Lights on! with a sapphire at his throat.

  I adore the scaly breast of the female green-crowned brilliant. Very fetching.

 Purple-throated mountaingems were buzzing about. I get kind of excited about the tiny hummingbirds, because they're usually really interesting.

I played with composition, trying to decide whether I preferred vertical

or horizontal treatment of this female purple-throated mountaingem.

Her dashing mate was much harder to catch, and I got only a whisper of his purple throat. But the white postocular stripe gives him away.

Photographing hummingbirds is like an addictive video game. You're always trying to better your last outing. There is no perfect hummingbird shot. But you sure wind up with a lot of them! Next time...

Hummingbirds of Toro Amarillo

Rolling through the Central Highlands of Costa Rica in our Magic Bus, we saw some cool stuff. This adult fasciated tiger heron (had a bare-throated tiger heron in the last post) was waiting in a mountain stream for something hapless to float by. 

We were headed for a special mountain restaurant at a beautiful waterfall called El Toro Amarillo. 

The Brugmansias were spectacular, albeit, by virtue of their great size and long corollas, more attractive to nectivorous bats than hummingbirds. 

Spectacular. As was the restaurant seating area.

Proprietor Will speaks with John and Betty.

The very first bird I laid eyes on was strangely familiar. But it illustrated a tenet of birding--that if you see something familiar in an exotic place, it can look very unfamiliar. I was staring at this bird, struggling to identify it when Mario stepped over and said softly, "Look familiar?"

I turned to him in confusion. I'd never seen this molt stage of a ruby-throated hummingbird! You'd think, having raised four males from babies, I miiiight have some idea...

I moved on to the endemics and residents. They were easier than our ONE SPECIES of hummingbird east of the Mississippi. Yes, I am making fun of myself.

Here at the Yellow Bull, green-crowned brilliants joust and jabber

with the diminutive endemic coppery-headed emerald

and the impressive green hermit, a lunker with a fabulous decurved bill and bizarre pthalo green back. That's bounce light on his shiny bill, by the way; it's reddish but not that red in real life.

Oh you little mosasaur. I love you.

This montane squirrel (also an endemic) enjoyed some leftover pineapple.

And the hummingbirds just got better and better. I do love a good white-bellied mountain gem.

The violet sabrewings on this trip were elusive. Durned hard to catch.

If you want to know what they look like in good light, go to my post "I Sing the Sabrewing Electric."

where you will see more of THIS. I kept assuring folks we'd get great shots of this species...it never happened in 2015. I was rolling in them in 2014. Every year, every place is different.

 The bird I'd never seen that I was really after was the green thorntail. You can't really tell how cool it is from this shot...

and then you get a back view, and you're all...what is that stuff on your tail??

So you follow this minuscule creature around a magic flower garden until you finally luck into the shot of your lifetime. No bigger than your pinky, clothed in emerald mail, all fancy in the butt end.

 Green thorntail, seen at last. Fairies, they fly, still and forever.