I have some serious Guatemala blogging to catch up on! And this Sunday morning when I read that on the calendar that is was April 5, yet looked out the window and saw snow covering the ground, I was longing for those 10 days in that tiny country. I wanted to think back to stopping at a coffee shop called Cabana Suissa where I got to savor tiny dudes like the berylline hummingbird above.
I mentioned earlier when I first came back that there were some digiscoping challenges due to shade and just not being used to the way the birds moved. Above is a female cinnamon-bellied flowerpiercer, I couldn't get a great shot of one of those birds to save my life, but thank goodness for bird feeders providing predictable perches.
Here's that berryline again. Check out those awesome hummingbird pants. I'm used to the standard ruby-throated hummingbird with green on the back, white on the front and the males have that splash of red on the throat. This guy is a gorgeous green, with glossy rust and bright white pants! Although, if we're going to talk in ornithology terms, those white feathers are covering the toes and feet, so this hummingbird would have white socks.
The azure-crowned hummingbird also had some white pants going on, but not nearly to the degree that the berylline did.
While getting shots of the azure-crowned, I was able to see a bit more of the spectacular colors of the magnificent hummingbird behind it. Note the purple, the emerald green on top of the other shiny greens of the white-eared hummingbird.
Here's a better shot of the white-eared in all its glory. I was having such a blast getting photos of birds, I never made it into the coffee shop. They guides were kind enough to grab the coffee for me and bring it out.
I could have spent all afternoon at Cabana Suiza, watching the none stop activity of the hummingbirds and getting photo after photo. It was fantastic to be out with such great guides keeping us on the move to add birds to our list, but it's all a treat just to stop and savor great birds in great light.
Hey, check out this hummer. This was the largest hummingbird that game into the feeders called a rufous saberwing--it was huge compared to the others, almost twice the size. I felt if it were any bigger, it would have been lethal around our heads. It was harder to get shots of the larger saberwing, it was more easily bullied by the smaller hummingbirds.
These are just some of the great birds that you can see in Guatemala.