Hummingbirds: Scintillant & Rufous-tailed, White-throated Mountain Gem and Green Violet-ear

1 February 2015. Finca Lerida, Chiriqui, Panama.  At the end of yesterday’s expedition with Jason he suggested that I might like to make a trip to Finca Lerida some day. He said it’s the closest and most reliable place to see hummingbirds and, if I chose to visit, I might expect to see Green Violet Ears, White-throated Mountain Gems as well as Scintillant and Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds. A day of hummingbirds sounded like a good way to spend this second half of the weekend and since it would be just a $5 taxi ride, I followed his suggestion.

Finca translates roughly as estate, farm or ranch. Some years ago the owner of Finca Lerida, this sprawling hillside coffee plantation, saw an opportunity to share the beauty of the estate, set in its frame of towering jungle-clad mountains, by creating a relatively small but glittering bed and breakfast, restaurant and coffee-shop. He succeeded, it is very pretty and there are many extraordinarily scenic stops throughout the property.I wasn’t there to criticize, but I suspect that few visitors give a moment’s thought to how many thousands of acres of virgin forest were cleared in its creation or ponder the pros and cons of coffee monoculture.

I used the term glittering to describe the public face to emphasize the exuberant use of colour. The broad splashes and sweeps of gold, scarlet and magenta are almost shocking. There are huge Angels Trumpet (or Brugmansia) trees carrying hundreds of pendulous pink, orange or cream flowers. Extravagant banks of Bougainvillea provide waves of colour-shock, while familiar flowering plants like Impatiens and Fuschia line and define paths. And it is perhaps the thousands of brilliant orange flowering bushes (I wish I knew what they were) that hold the most appeal for hummingbirds.

Finca Lerida welcomes birders and provides a guide to a number of trails that skirt the background forest; I walked them all. My notes of the day record: ” ..I set off to walk the trails of Finca Lerida. It was several hours of walking of the kind I like best. There was always something fascinating: ferns of all sizes from the minute to 10M tree-size, leaf shapes and patterns, flowers, towering trees, bamboo and all a-tangle. I couldn’t help thinking of the early Spanish soldiers and merchants and the impenetrability of how it must have been. I hiked out to a putative waterfall, which, while vertiginous, was truly puny, perhaps a garden hose volume dropping over greened cliff. Back at Finca Lerida I enjoyed an hour or so of ambush photography of hummingbirds. I know I have Green Violet-ear, Scintillant and Rufous tailed – but what else?…and a photo of what I took to be a euphonia of some sort but can’t make a match.” (It turned out to be a Slate-throated Redstart.)

That hour of ‘ambush photography’ produced many duds as expected, but it’s a numbers game and inevitably some turned out okay. I had little idea what species I was photographing, but no matter, if I get a decent shot I can always i.d it later. It turns out that most were Green-Violet Ears, a self-explanatory name if ever there was. But I’m pretty sure there are a couple of Scintillant and Rufous-tailed Hummingbird shots and the odd mystery bird. Identification really didn’t matter a lot, they are all extreme exotics and, as always, it’s more about the day, the place and the experience.

Footnote. One of the things about hummingbirds that often catches my attention is their many fanciful names. (At least among English-speakers.) I suppose it’s something of a reflection of the somewhat cutesy and frivolous view we hold of them. A quick review in the index of The Birds of Panama came up with: Greenish Puffleg, White-vented Plumeleteer, Humboldt’s Sapphire, Green-breasted Mango and Violet Sabrewing; and that’s just in Panama. It’s as if they’re viewed more like Christmas tree decoration than a marvellously adapted and sophisticated family of birds.

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