Lowlands Hummers

While the jungles have a lot to offer from a birding standpoint, one of their drawbacks is that the heat and humidity molds hummingbird feeders very quickly; few of the lodges put them out.  It was a lot harder to see the lowland hummers than the birds coming into the highland feeders. We spent a good amount of time staring up into a row of large orange flowering trees, trying to get on the birds before they could fly.  It was pretty difficult.

Blue-throated Goldentail was a bird I was hoping to see.  We did see several, but it was a tough bird to get a good look at; they didn't perch low.  The bright pink bill was a better ID feature than either of the characters in the name.

I didn't really hope to see a Long-billed Starthroat, the book lists them as uncommon

This one twice fed very close to us directly into the sun briefly.

White-crested Coquette is a specialty of the Costa Rican - Panamanian border area.  The female is not that distinct.  We saw good numbers of Black-crested Coquette last year on the Caribbean side.

Veraguan Mango is limited mostly to just Panama; it just crosses into Costa Rican in small numbers

 The blue throat and breast strip (as opposed to black) distinguishes it from the more widespread Green-breasted Mango

Finally the ever-present Rufous-tailed Hummingbird