Tuesday, July 12, 2016

a Coppery-headed endemic

There's a lot of birds that can be seen in Costa Rica.  There's a small handful (I can think of 3) that can only be seen there (excluding the ~25 birds that are endemics to the Chiriqui highlands shared with Panama).  One is the Coppery-headed Emerald, a small hummingbird particular to a narrow elevation band mostly (I think) on the Pacific slope.  It's one of the highlights of the aforementioned Cocoro Hummingbird garden.

If I had actual photoshop skills I'd ditch that barbed wire.

Head-on Emeralds are stupendously green.

The white tail flash is a pretty good marker for these short-billed birds as well.

A couple better looks at the female.
 If I said last time that female Wood-nymphs look sort of Generic Hummingbird-esque then the female emerald definitely lowers that bar.
The small size and short bill though eliminate the other possibilities, at this location at least.

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