Praise Ceiling Cat, fleas be upon him: we have received a couple of submissions to tide us over. Today biologist and artist Lou Jost, who works at Ecuador’s Ecominga Foundation, has contributed some lovely hummingbird videos. Lou’s captions are indented, and you know how to enlarge YouTube videos:
The Americas are currently the only continents that have hummingbirds, though the oldest hummingbird-like fossils are actually from Europe. In today’s world the centers of hummingbird diversity are the mountains of Costa Rica and Panama, and the northern Andes of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Ecuador alone has 137 species of hummingbirds, compared to only 15-17 hummingbird species regularly found in the US. I recently visited an Ecuadorian birding lodge (Sachatamia) in northwest Ecuador, with many hummingbird feeders. The chaotic swarm of hummingbirds surrounding these feeders gives a good impression of this diversity. Here are some phone videos I took over the course of a few minutes.
Left to right: three Andean Emeralds, (Uranomitra franciae; white throats, light blue crown iridescence), the aptly named White-necked Jacobin (Florisuga mellivora), another Andean Emerald (head down) and a Rufous-tailed Hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl, pink beak and iridescent green throat), also initially head down). Then more Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds and a brief Brown Violetear (Colibri delphinae):
Booted Raquet-tail (Ocreatus underwoodii) and Andean Emerald:
Purple-bibbed Whitetip (Urosticte benjamini, white spot behind eye and in tail, iridescent purple throat), Booted Raquet-tail, second Purple-bibbed White tip. Then something else obscured by feeder:
Female Empress Brilliant (Heliodoxa imperatrix)?, female Violet-crowned Woodnymph (Thalurania colombica, blue shoulders), displaced by male Green-crowned Woodnymph (iridescent green throat and purple body) in turn displaced by Empress Brilliant, photobombed at end by tiny beelike woodstar species:
Green-crowned Woodnymph front, Fawn-breasted Brilliant (Heliodoxa rubinoides, fawn breast, pink chest/throat patch) at rear, displaced by male Empress Brilliant, cameos by White-necked Jacobin, Andean Emerald, and others.
Velvet-purple Coronet (Boissonneaua jardini):
Brown Violetear, Empress Brilliant, a woodstar species, and Andean Emerald:
Nice! I didn’t know that Hummingbirds are native only to the Americas. Now I do!
Regarding the video where your hand is on the feeder while the birds are drinking. We had a hummingbird feeder when we lived in rural southwestern Virginia. I would sit within a couple of feet of the feeder, quietly, and hummingbirds would come into the feeder as if I weren’t there. I was afraid that they would hit me in the head! They are bold little creatures.
Sometimes when I am showing people these feeders, I point with my finger to show them a bird, a hummingbird lands on my finger. They will even drink out of one’s hand. In fact an especially creative artist, Carla Bengtson, made a hand-shaped hummingbird feeder to teach them to come to our hands.
https://www.carlabengtson.com/hummer-habituator/
What gorgeous hummers–thank you so much for sharing the videos. I used to watch a live cam from Ecuador that included a hummer feeder plus a flat surface with various types of fruit that attracted other birds and a few mammals, but it went off line several years ago. Do you have a similar live cam, or do you know of one?
I think that must have been the Jocotoco Foundation’s Buenaventura Reserve. THose are very hard to set up and maintain in remote areas, so we have not done one. It would be nice to try again now that technology has advanced. We have a Starlink device. I’ll mention it to folks here.
Beautiful, thanks!
The velvet-ear coronet is my favorite. I love the bright iridescent colors. Thank you for sending these photos in.