Costa Rica Hummingbirds

There are more than 300 species of hummingbirds in the world (all of them in the Americas). Of them, only 1 (one) can be found in the northeastern US. To see the rest of them, you have to travel to the tropics.

Costa Rica lists 30 hummingbirds. We saw 13 of them on our visit. By far the most impressive place, hummingbird-wise, was the gallery next to the entrance to Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve. Well, gallery is a bit of an overstatement - it was a cafe with about a dozen feeders hung outside. The hummers were buzzing around like flies. They are fiercely territorial - they can't even stand having others feeding next to them - so there were a lot of fights, Antman-style. But it did allow for some pretty good shots!

And I love their names! This one is a Purple-Throated Mountain Gem:


Green Violetear:


Green-Crowned Brilliant:


Violet Sabrewing:


Here is a couple of Green-Crowned Brilliants:


Another Green-Crowned Brilliant:


Another interesting aspect of hummingbirds is their iridescent colors. Their feathers are actually colorless. The color comes from the light filtering through their feather structure, and it changes depending on the angle. For example, here are three pictures of the same bird, Purple-Throated Mountain Gem:






Magenta-Throated Woodstar:


Green-Crowned Brilliant:


Purple-Throated Mountain Gem:


Green Violetear:


Green-Crowned Brilliant - male:


Green-Crowned Brilliant - female:


Violet Sabrewing:


Green-Crowned Brilliant - female:


Green-Crowned Brilliant - male:


Stripe-Tailed Hummingbird:


Green-Crowned Brilliant:


Scaly-Breasted Hummingbird:


Blue-Throated Goldentail:

Summer pictures

Costa Rica - Mountains and Coast

Costa Rica is a country of many climates. It's about the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined, but because it its topology, it has 6 different climate and wildlife zones. One such zone, rare in other parts of the world, is the Cloud Forest.

Monteverde Cloud Forest is an area on the Pacific side of the Tilaran Range in the north of the country. The trade winds come up from the Pacific ocean, but can't cross the high mountains and end up shrouding the slopes in near-constant clouds and mist. This produces spectacular biodiversity and abundance of flora and wildlife.

It also produces near-constant rainbows:







This is what being in a cloud forest feels like. The sun is shining - but the mist is ever-present:


Monteverde is a major ecotourism destination, and we stayed in one of the lodges catering to visitors of the park. Just to prove that we are in a wild country now, this coati showed up in our lodge just when we were checking in.


Another proof that it's not your usual destination. It was not an idle threat - the monkeys did come to the garden one day.


We made it to the Monteverde park the day after we arrived.






On the way from Monteverde to Carara, lunch in a roadside restaurant:


Carara park is a complete opposite from Monteverde. It's located in Pacific coastal lowlands, in a place where two more climate zones come together: dry tropical forest and wet tropical forest, resulting in a huge diversity of plants and animals. But on arrival, we were greeted by one of the ubiquitous white-headed capuchins:


Even more ubiquitous were the iguanas - this one on top of our house:




Another local celebrity is the American Crocodile. Right near the park is the Tarcoles River. A bridge crosses it at one point, and the crocodiles like to out and bask in the sun on the islands and shores by the bridge:




We saw many butterflies in Costa Rica, but this one was different. It's one of a few that camouflage themselves as dry leaves:


Speaking of leaves - came across a small army of leadcutter ants. They take the leaves to their mounds, and use it to farm a fungus that is their main food.


More good shots: