Female hummingbirds sometimes look like the brightly colored males of their species. Researchers have long pondered the reason for this. Now, a study of hummingbirds in Panama suggests that sporting male-like feathers helps some females avoid intense bullying, researchers recently reported in Current Biology. To find out why this surprising pattern arises, researchers studied the […]
Tag: Hummingbirds
I thank my lucky stars for the rosellas that led to my career in ornithology
A flash of colour that takes my eye at the age of 10 in 1968 and learning that it is an Adelaide rosella. Reaching the edge of a vast swamp north of Birdsville in 1982 thinking, “This is perfect habitat for grey grasswrens. They must be here.” And they are! Right at the edge of […]
Meet the beautiful birds that are rebuilding Brazil’s Atlantic Forests
Want to restore a degraded forest? Why not let the birds do the work! Find out how – with a little help from BirdLife – some of Brazil’s most threatened birds are coming back, and bringing the whole forest with them… When you think of Brazilian forests, the Amazon is probably the first place that […]
Jamaican Hummingbirds
Jamaican Hummingbirds are quite dazzling. A year ago today, while visiting Jamaica, I was blessed to have a visit from a stunning maleRed-billed Streamertail (Trochilus polytmus.) Early mornings, I stoodon my balcony waiting for them to come sip from the bright hibiscus blossoms covering a large bush just below my railing. During my walks to […]
Endemic & Endangered Birds of the “Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta” (Colombia-South America)
Colombia, is one of the countries with the highest biodiversity on the planet, the highest number of animal and plant species per square kilometer anywhere in the world. With 1871 bird species, it has the largest number of bird species of any country on earth, this number continue to rise each year, 74 birds are […]
Costa Rica Photo Journal by Don Getty – Part 2 of 3
Day 4 was the day to move to Bosque De Paz Lodge. It was a rainy day – just fine for a little rainforest landscape photography and for photographing birds from under the eaves of the lodge. Why travel to a rainforest if a little rain slows you down! Day 5 at Bosque De Paz […]
Black-chinned Hummingbirds (II)
These Black-chinned hummingbirds are from this summer, since I’m a slacker. I finally figured out all it took was a a bit of patience to get hummingbird flight photos and gave myself one of those pats-on-the-back kind of things once I realized this. (Patience is not really my thing, which is a problem with bird […]
Picaflor Cordillerano (Oreotrochilus leucopleurus) (adult male)
The Picaflor Cordillerano (Oreotrochilus leucopleurus) is one of the six species of hummingbirds of Chile and the most colorful of them all. Is not easy to find and even harder to photograph. To achieve my purpose I needed to explore various environments where the birds might be nesting, perhaps on the roof of a small […]