Two Fearless Garden Birds
March 28th, 2014

Wild hummingbirds are a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of thing. Not infrequently I would find one feeding at a flower bush, only to have it warp into another dimension before I could even get my binoculars up. I saw ten different types of hummingbirds on this vacation but most of them were sadly unphotographable.

The Rufous-Tailed Hummingbirds in the garden, though, were bold and numerous. This one flew to a tree with mimosa-like pink flowers in the front yard one afternoon, and proceeded to feed at every single flower it could find. It stopped at one particularly nectar-laden flower long enough for one good shot.


1680x1050 wallpaper

You usually think of wrens as shy birds, but the Rufous-Naped Wrens at Pueblo Real almost out-bolded the grackles. A pair nested in the fruit tree right in front of our window, and regular came to our balcony to sing. They even looked into our suite curiously. Their song was a mellow, cheery warble, a welcome change from their more strident neighbors.

This is one of the places where our field guide (Garrigues & Dean, which I strongly recommend) was out of date. It shows RNWs as occurring no further south than Carara. Quepos is now very much in their range.



At our balcony planter:

Billing And Cooing ←

→ Boating the Mangroves (part 1)