Claire and I (and in a couple of days our 3 children and 4 grandchildren) are spending Thanks-giving in Costa Rica (our third trip together here). The weather is appalling - continuous rain -but here are a couple of hummingbird videos shot just outside our room at the famous Wilson Botanical Garden, near the southern border with Panama. First the purple-crowned fairy (Heliothrys barroti, a male) and then a Rufous-Tailed (Amazilia tzacatl), both feeding on purple porterweed. We are at 3000 feet and the annual rain fall is 150 inches (of which 10 feet seems to have fallen in the last few days - parts of the garden are under water and hairpin-bend roads have collapsed).
The rufous-tailed hummer seems to be the dominant one at this porterweed patch: he spends a lot of time perched on one of the rat-tail-like flowerstalks of the porterweed. Indeed, the spanish name for this plant is "blue rat's-tail".
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