More Shade Coffee Birds

 A chestnut-sided warbler happily hunted the coffee shrubs

cocking her tail and drooping her wings as CSWA's like to do.

She was joined by a young American redstart

 white-eyed vireos, and the omnipresent black-throated green warblers who got all up in my face and said howdy.

The toucan is not the only acrobatic bird around here.

I can hang upside down. And I will, until you tell all your coffee-drinking friends (that's, like everybody I know) to spring for shade-grown, bird-friendly coffee. You can buy Birds and Beans coffee here. It's certified as Bird Friendly by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, and it's 100% organic. And I don't get a cut...I'm a believer, and I hope these photos will make you one, too.

 Thank you very much. 

 From the looks of these leaves, I'm thinking there wasn't much spraying going on in the Finca Las Glorias plantations. Did you know that warblers key into insect damage when they're foraging? It's like following the tracks of their prey.

 Parrots in flight, like these white-fronted Amazons, are really hard to photograph. But I like what I got--it evokes the screaming and the bullet-like exit. Perhaps they've had the same welcome as the toucans in this plantation.

To my surprise, the plantation workers were chopping off perfectly good looking coffee plants to just this high, a few inches off the ground. This one didn't survive the chopping and was growing some terrific looking lavender shelf fungi. But most of the rest did. The reason they chop the shrubs almost to the ground is that when they get too tall, the workers can't reach the beans to pick them, so they have to keep hacking the plant back so it makes new growth that's nice and short. 

Then they throw the shrubs in the rows between the hacked-off stumps, essentially mulching the plants with their own corpses.

 An exquisite clear-winged butterfly, sort of a fly-meets butterfly effect. Woweee.

 And some mating skippers, I know not which kind, but there's substantial sexual dimorphism between them. 

I kept hearing the most amazing whooshing sound, like fighter jets, so I moved out into the open to see what it was. It was black vultures! They were riding a thermal way up high, and when they got high enough they'd half-fold their wings and come whooshing down like storm troopers, one after another. It looked like such fun! I wish I had a recording of the sound. Birds play, too.

A summer tanager bid me goodbye after a wonderful day in the shade coffee plantations. 

With the pleasant highland weather, the dappled sun and the abundance of birds, I was thrilled to be there, alone, soaking it all in. 

Buy bird-friendly shade-grown coffee. Better yet, go to Honduras and see where it comes from. And tell the black-throated greens you heard it from me.

Colene and Bill McKee share a moment in a paradise for birdwatchers.

Want to find certified bird-friendly coffee for sale near you? Follow this link to the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center's map of US retailers.

Blackburniantics

We've been starting every day with birdwatching off the deck and tower. Such joy, to spend an hour or two just watching birds. What a way to start the day. It's torture to come inside, but around 10 AM it slows down enough to let me go back into the studio. Soon enough, these little migrants, gaudy and flashy and delicate and exotic, will be gone, well on their way to their Central and South American wintering grounds. So we revel in them while we can, soaking them up and taking digital souvenirs of their stay with us.

It's a thrill to get enough pictures of a single species to make a little photoessay, perhaps get a tiny glimpse into their complex behavior, their lives. I gather what bits I may in the privileged moments I spend in their presence.

I glance at the bird Spa, which I do hundreds of times each day as I "work," and see something tiny, colorful, out of place. A warbler. Which one? Perhaps the titmouse wonders, too.
It jumps to the dry rock, revealing a cheek patch and the hint of a burning orange throat. Nice wingbars! A Blackburnian warbler. What a fine sight to greet the morning.
I study my books, but can't decide whether this is an adult female or a first fall male. No matter. It's beautiful.

Turning toward me, it shows its glowing throat. It takes a long, soaky bath.It repairs to the nearby birch to preen and fluff its damp feathers.Lots of work to do under the wings.I am flabbergasted at the length and flexibility of its neck. Blackburnians are such compact little warblers, but this neck would do credit to an ibis. And I'm stunned again to see it twist its tiny body into the most impossible position as it surveys the yard. If I drew a bird with its leg like this, any ornithologist worth her salt would shoot me down. Including me. Yep, that's the hind toe on the outside edge of the branch.
Soon, it's time to think about leaving. The warbler surveys the birch leaves for a morsel of food to speed it on its way, checks the sky.It hops up to an exposed branch, giving me a fleeting moment's more pleasure.It mounts to the top of the sycamore we planted close to our deck

and is gone.