Readers’ wildlife photos

We have a few more batches in the queue now, but it’s never enough.

And today we’re featuring lovely bird photos from Ephraim Heller. I had no idea this gorgeous creature existed! Ephraim’s ID and captions are indented, and, as usual, you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

I never had a favorite bird. Oh, sure, I’ve seen plenty of bewitching bee-eaters, mesmerizing manakins and motmots and macaws, plummy pigeons, parrots and pheasants, and tangy toucans and tanagers, but they never held my attention.

In Trinidad I first met a tufted coquette (Lophornis ornatus):

My coquette is 6.6 centimeters (2.6 in) long and weighs just 2.3 grams (0.081 oz) – much smaller than my thumb! My coquette doesn’t eat at hummingbird feeders with the big boys – its bill is too short:

Its food is nectar, taken from a variety of flowers, and some small invertebrates. Across hummingbirds, specialization often involves bill length and curvature for particular flowers; my coquette is relatively unspecialized in bill morphology. My coquette often must sneak nectar from the territories of other hummingbirds. With its small size and steady flight, my coquette resembles a large bee as it moves from flower to flower:

Many hummingbird genera have territorial males, but the combination of extreme ornamentation, very small body size, and intense aggression is a hallmark of Lophornis.

There are 11 species in the genus Lophornis, all as beautiful as my coquette. The name Lophornis combines Greek for “crest” (lophos) and “bird” (ornis), calling out a shared trait of all the birds in this genus:

Per the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a coquette is “a woman who endeavors without sincere affection to gain the attention and admiration of men.” But I forgive my coquette. The females are more subdued than the males, but still marvelous:

In French my coquette is called “Coquette huppe-col,” which literally translates to “tufted collar coquette.” That sounds lovely in French. In German it is called “Schmuckelfe,” which combines the literal terms “jewelry or ornament” and “elf or fairy.” To my ear, “jeweled fairy” sounds more pleasant and less insulting than “schmuckelfe”: