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tandayapa

  1. White-booted Racket-tail

    White-booted Racket-tail

    I quite like to have a shot of each species flying where one can just see the whole bird in profile.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • ocreatus underwoodii tandayapa white-booted racket-tail
    • Comments: 4
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  2. White-booted Racket-tail

    White-booted Racket-tail

    Here's today's `action shot'.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • ocreatus underwoodii tandayapa white-booted racket-tail
    • Comments: 1
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  3. White-booted Racket-tail

    White-booted Racket-tail

    Yesterday we had the male with his spectacular rackets and the white boots, today it's the very different looking female. These are the second smallest hummingbirds to be found as regular visitors at Tandayapa, but the males can be quite aggressive, I thought. The females were more likely to...
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • ocreatus underwoodii tandayapa white-booted racket-tail
    • Comments: 1
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  4. White-booted Racket-tail

    White-booted Racket-tail

    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • ocreatus underwoodii tandayapa white-booted racket-tail
    • Comments: 4
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  5. White-booted Racket-tail

    White-booted Racket-tail

    Here's a species that gave us a lot of great photo opportunities - with the tail streamers there was always the chance of getting something interesting. This bird certainly does its name justice! The split of Booted Racket-tail into three species hasn't (yet?) been accepted by Clements.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • ocreatus underwoodii tandayapa white-booted racket-tail
    • Comments: 3
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  6. White-booted Racket-tail

    White-booted Racket-tail

    I like the clear intent that is visible in the bird's expression. Nothing is going to come between it and its food.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • ocreatus underwoodii tandayapa white-booted racket-tail
    • Comments: 1
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  7. Andean Emerald

    Andean Emerald

    And for today's action shot, this one - one of the rare occasions when an Andean Emerald did something other than fly straight.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • andean emerald tandayapa uranomitra franciae
    • Comments: 1
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  8. Andean Emerald

    Andean Emerald

    This flower was popular with a variety of species, as can be seen here.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • andean emerald tandayapa uranomitra franciae
    • Comments: 0
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  9. Andean Emerald

    Andean Emerald

    A fairly common hummingbird at Tandayapa is the Andean Emerald. Because it is fairly common, and because most of the time these birds weren't given to the kind of extravagant flight action that I've posted previously we didn't get very excited about them. It just serves to show how spoilt...
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • andean emerald tandayapa uranomitra franciae
    • Comments: 2
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  10. Purple-throated Woodstar

    Purple-throated Woodstar

    And here's today's action photo. This one reminds me of a fighter jet or something similarly fast and incisive. It certainly shows how much control these birds have over their tail feathers - this is not a species with a forked tail, although one could be fooled into thinking that based on this...
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • purple-throated woodstar tandayapa
    • Comments: 2
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  11. Purple-throated Woodstar

    Purple-throated Woodstar

    This flower worked rather well for us, it was apparently very noticeable for the birds and it had a good capacity for filling with sugar water. It was quite surprising how bold these small hummingbirds were - I'll later post some photos where they're challenging others several times larger.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • purple-throated woodstar tandayapa
    • Comments: 1
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  12. Purple-throated Woodstar

    Purple-throated Woodstar

    If you were wondering with yesterday's pictures why the bird is called `purple-throated' this photo of a male should show you. However, the throat on a male often looks just dark, and it needs to be hit by the light in the right way to do justice to the name.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • purple-throated woodstar tandayapa
    • Comments: 1
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  13. Purple-throated Woodstar

    Purple-throated Woodstar

    And another one with a flower. One can just see the bird's tongue coming out.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • purple-throated woodstar tandayapa
    • Comments: 2
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  14. Purple-throated Woodstar

    Purple-throated Woodstar

    This image gives a bit of an idea of how small these birds are, here with a fuchsia and a small insect.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • purple-throated woodstar tandayapa
    • Comments: 1
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  15. Purple-throated Woodstar

    Purple-throated Woodstar

    Today we're looking at the smallest species of hummingbird regularly seen at Tandayapa. When they fly they're reminiscent of bumble bees. Today we'll just look at females who look quite different from the males. Here we can see how the bird uses its tail (even if it's not very long) in a way...
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • purple-throated woodstar tandayapa
    • Comments: 1
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  16. Brown Violetear

    Brown Violetear

    I think in this photo it's really worth looking how the bird is using its feathers to help it manoeuvre. There's be more Violetears down the line but I think maybe it's nicer to have a different species every day to provide some variety.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • brown violetear tandayapa
    • Comments: 1
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  17. Mexican stand-off

    Mexican stand-off

    By and large the Brown Violetears weren't very aggressive here, preferring not to contend with other species for a place on the feeder. Apparently this changes once another bird of the same species is involved.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • brown violetear tandayapa
    • Comments: 3
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  18. Brown Violetear

    Brown Violetear

    The final Violetear to be found at Tandayapa today. This is quite a contrast to the two mainly green species, but I think you'll find we have some nice action shots of this species coming up. But starting, a standard side-on shot.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • brown violetear tandayapa
    • Comments: 3
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  19. Sparkling Violetear

    Sparkling Violetear

    This is one of my favourite pictures from these sessions. This picture reminds me of a comic book type illustration exaggerating movement - but the photo serves as proof that the flight action of these birds can be crazy! Typically one would get pictures like this if the bird decided to suddenly...
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • sparkling violetear tandayapa
    • Comments: 1
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  20. Sparkling Violetear

    Sparkling Violetear

    Here we have more of a side-on view which shows that if the light has just the right angle then there's a lot of blue iridescence.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • sparkling violetear tandayapa
    • Comments: 2
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  21. Sparkling Violetear

    Sparkling Violetear

    Yesterday we had the Lesser Violetear, and today we're going to look at its reasonably similar cousin. This photo nicely illustrates three of the differences: The blue in the tail, the blue on the belly, and the fact that the violet `ears' expand to cover the whole throat area.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • sparkling violetear tandayapa
    • Comments: 3
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  22. Lesser Violetear

    Lesser Violetear

    And a different one again. A few times we replaced the feeders by flowers that were filled (and refilled) with the same sugar water for some slightly different shots. Most birds found it a bit harder to feed from these natural feeders than the artificial ones, and there were some wild flight...
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • lesser violetear tandayapa
    • Comments: 3
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  23. Lesser Violetear

    Lesser Violetear

    And here quite a different perspective! In particular when other birds were already at the feeder we somtimes got some interesting manoeuvres, of which we'll see a lot more with other species.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • lesser violetear tandayapa
    • Comments: 0
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  24. Lesser Violetear

    Lesser Violetear

    The Violetears have a reasonably large distribution and I think they're common enough not to be particularly popular with birdwatchers. At Tandayapa, there were the three expected species of Violetears present in goodish numbers, but for their size they were comparatively timid. If there was a...
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • lesser violetear tandayapa
    • Comments: 1
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
  25. Rufous-tailed Hummingbird

    Rufous-tailed Hummingbird

    And one more - you can see that this shot is quite similar to the first one I just posted.
    • kitefarrago
    • Media item
    • rufous-tailed hummingbird tandayapa
    • Comments: 2
    • Category: Central & South America & Mexico
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