2016 Costa Rica 2: Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds

If I die and get reincarnated, I want to be reincarnated into a hummingbird: I don't want to live long, but I want to live intensely and brilliantly. And no creature fits that bill than hummingbirds. These beautiful, magnificent and scintillating nymphs live their lives on the edge. But what lives are theirs! They fly, they hover, they drink nectar, their heart can beat over one thousand times a minute! And in the bridge sunlight they burst into a dazzling swirl of rainbow colors. If I could be a hummingbird, I would not want to be anything else.

Ok, so much for hyperboles. But the neotropics is the place to view and photograph hummingbirds. At Bosque de Paz, the staff stock the hummingbird feeders diligently, and the "hummers" have become used to them. This gave me the perfect opportunity to take pictures of them. One of the new species is the Magnificent Hummingbird.

(Click on each image to see the high-resolution version)

Magnificent Hummingbird

The colors of the hummingbirds' plumage are not caused by pigment, but by reflections of incident rays (more on this topic here). As the direction of light changes, the color of their body changes dramatically. The following sequence of pictures illustrate this perfectly (especially the first 5 pictures, they are of the exact same bird in the same position).

Magnificent Hummingbird

Another new hummingbird was a Black-bellied Hummingbird. This one appeared to be rather aloof and never came to the feeders; I photographed it in the bushes.

Black-bellied Hummingbird

The most numerous and active are the Green-crowned Brilliants, I just realized that almost half of the pictures on this page are of them. But I can never get tired watching them.