Today we’ll see the last of Bruce Lyon’s lovely hummingbird pictures (with two miscellaneous photos). Here’s a bit of background taken from the last set (March 8):
On my annual family trip to Costa Rica I spent a couple of days at Monteverde, a cloud forest site well known to both biologists and tourists. Cloud forest and the wet montane habitat just downslope of cloud forest have a very high diversity of hummingbirds. The single hummingbird feeder at the place we stayed at attracted seven species, often at the same time. At times up to thirty individual birds were visiting the feeder or were perched very close by waiting for their turn. All of the photos here were taken with a Canon 6D body and a F4 500 Canon lens with a 1/4 X teleconverter.
I recommend enlarging the photos so you can see every colorful detail.
Violet Sabrewings (Campylopterus hemileucurus) were the largest species to visit the feeder and they were also very feisty. Unlike the other hummingbird species that are happy to perch in the open, the sabrewings typically retreated back into the woods in between feeding bouts:
A Violet Sabrewing coming in for a landing:
A sabrewing landing in the rain:
A male Striped-tailed Hummingbird (Eupherusa eximia). This species is a ‘nectar robber’ that can get nectar from plants whose floral corollas are too long for the hummingbird to get nectar in the usual way. Instead, the hummingbird punctures the base of the corolla and gets nectar without pollinating the plant:
This plant, Razisea spicata, is a common victim of Stripe-tailed Hummingbird nectar robbing:
Another stripe-tailed hummingbird:
A male Purple-throated Mountain-gem (Lampornis calolaemus). Hummingbirds often have wonderful names:
Another male Purple-throated Mountain-gem at sunset:
Female Purple-throated Mountain-gem:
A Green-crowned Brilliant (Heliodoxa jacula):
One non-hummingbird species came to the feeder—the nectar specialist Bananaquit (Coereba flaveola) which is a passerine songbird. Apparently, its classification is still unclear:
I love hummingbirds! I have noticed that hummingbirds seem to almost all have white feathers near their eyes, no matter which ones we are looking at. I used to think that I could see the whites of my hummingbirds’ eyes until I took pictures of them & could see those whites were actually white feathers near the eyes. I wonder what this white near they eyes does?
Wow… what a stunning series here…
Incredible images…
Thank you so much for sharing 🙂
Such incredibly beautiful colors! Lovely photos!
I’m pretty sure most of those hummingbird colors are new colors.
Nice photos of such incredible birds! Costa Rica is moving way up on my list of places to visit.
I am putting together some equipment for my new Canon T5i body, and so I like to look up lenses that other people are using.
The f4 500 mm lens… that goes for about $5000? Yikes, that is way out of my league!
If you want to spend a bit less, the 300mm f/4 is much cheaper. I pair it with a 1.4x telextender but with a crop camera you will get plenty of reach with the 300mm.
Thanks! I will look into that.
I don’t know that the bananaquit’s classification is unclear. We know it’s a tanager closely related to Darwin’s finches and a number of Caribbean grassquits.
Thanks for clarifying John.
Stunning & gorgeous hummers. And the photography is quite impressive.
Such gorgeous birds.
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing these.
Wonderful photos! Tiny birds sure make up for it with big colour 🙂
Until you see photos like these (or the real birds) it’s hard to imagine birds could be so beautiful. Just stunning.
Hummingbirds are my favorite, and these pictures are beautiful!
Stunning. Thank you for posting these. I love to watch the hummingbirds here in Oregon. Even better to have these close up pictures of their lovely coloring.