BASICS


BASICS: "Hummingbirds.....where is the person, I ask, who, on observing this glittering fragment of the rainbow, would not pause, admire, and turn his mind with reverence..." (J. J. Audubon).
This is a blog about my summer life at the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary, at my winter garden, Calypso, in the Bahamas, and aspects of life in general.
This private sanctuary is now permanently closed to the general public, as a result of a lawsuit brought by a neighbor. Only my friends and personal guests may visit (paul.adams%stonybrook.edu).

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Costa Rica hurricane and hummingbirds: Purple-throated mountain gem





So far we have stayed 1 night in Tarcoles, 1 night in Dominical (both Pacific coast), 2 nights at the Wilson Botanical Garden near San Vito (central southern border near Panama) and 1 night on Poas Volcano (back in northern Costa Rica, not far from San Jose). The videos were shot this evening at the roadside outside our Poas hotel and show a female Purple-Thoated Mountain Gem (Lampornis calolaemis), which has a buff/orange throat and belly.
Unfortunately it appears that Otto, a late-season Atlantic hurricane, will make landfall in northern Costa Rica on Thanksgiving morning. Amazingly this will be Costa Rica's first ever recorded hurricane! We will be at Arenal Volcano Lodge at the wrong time and place. However I suspect we will just get yet more rain, with the real danger from washed-out roads - the roads leading to the lodge are always bad, and will be worse.
This morning we hiked up to the Poas Volcano crater - it looked like an open-catmone in West Verginia, with a large milky lake in the middle. This afternoon we discovered a marvelous but unnannounced  small hummingbird garden close to our hotel, and just across the road from the restaurant where we ate lunch (all 11 of us; Claire and I shared a dish of "chicherrones") and I have shot a lot of film which I will try to sort out soon - a remarkable display of many types of hummingbirds at the feeders there. But to finish with here's a close-up of another female mountain gem at that garden, who seemed rather torpid and immobile. Tomorrow morning we go to the famous La Paz Waterfall Garden, which is famous for hummingbirds.





No comments:

Post a Comment