East slope hummingbirds

After our morning walk at Guango we spent about 20 minutes at the hummingbird feeders before having to pull ourselves away.  The Andes Mountains are consistently tall enough that there's not a lot of habitat corridors to allow birds to bleed over from one side of the mountain to the others so the same elevation can have very different birds on the two sides.  (Or maybe it's a moisture difference; the west side is a lot wetter than the east side).  Either way there were a handful of birds at these feeders that were unique to the trip.

First up is Long-tailed Sylph, actually fairly common at Guango.  The long-tailed hummingbirds were not easy to photograph.  It was very difficult to get the face in focus but still get the iridescence of the upper surface of the tail.

Next up is Tourmaline Sunangel, a short-billed, dark, medium-sized hummingbird.

Speaking of degree of difficulty, it's really hard to get the focus locked up on a moving bird very close to you.  It was a little bit of a bummer this White-bellied Woodstar has some scruffy molt going on.

Chestnut-breasted Coronet is another east slope specialty.  We saw I think 3 species of coronet on the trip, they would typically extend their wings when they would land.  I also saw both Chestnut-breasted as well as a west slope species do this display where one bird would extend its wings and bill from below the other.  I think it was likely a courtship thing since it was fairly protracted.  Sexes are identical in coronets though so hard to say for sure.

This is Buff-tailed Coronet, a species found on both sides and honestly one of my favorite pics from the tip.

Incas are fairly large hummingbirds with long heavy bills, this is Collared Inca.

One more view of one of the smaller species, Tyrian Metaltail that we'd seen at higher elevations the day before.

We did glimpse a few other species, including Sword-billed Hummingbird and, for some members, Moutain Velvetbreast, but those will have to wait for later posts (or for the Velvetbreast that I missed later trips!)