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Long-tailed sylph - 3, La Planada Nature Reserve, Colombia
Our 2nd day in La Planada Nature Reserve, which was our only full day in the reserve, was full of challenges. The morning hike brought an interesting set of birds, yet conditions were challenging. After lunch, extremely heavy, deafening rain set in and continued for pretty much the entire afternoon.
We retreated to our private lodge. For hours on end, I did absolutely nothing at all, a rarity in my life. I just sat at the porch overseeing the bushes in front of it, whilst Henriette went inside to read a book. Its throughout this long sit at the porch that I noticed an interesting interval.
Hugo the Hummingbird, a male Long-tailed sylph, we had seen before around the lodges of the reserve. In this heavy never-ending rain I noticed it would attend a fruit tree directly in front of me, every 20 minutes or so. Not to feed, instead to dry and clean its feathers. It would pick the same dry branch of the tree every single time, and spend about a minute there. Most hummingbirds cannot stop feeding just because it rains, so they are stuck in this perpetual cycle of feeding and drying wings.
So here's a few shots of Hugo, a 4K video, and an over-the-top drama glitter edit.
The long-tailed sylph is a species of hummingbird in the Trochilidae family. It is found in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist montane forest.
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Check out the long, shimmering tail on this hummingbird! Wow! The Long-tailed Sylph (Aglaiocercus kingii) is a hummingbird that lives in the humid, montane forests of the Andes. They feed on nectar and insects. Insects provide a crucial source of protein, and nesting females can catch around 2,000 insects per day! Unfortunately, they have short bills, which aren't always long enough to reach nectar. But, no worries—they don't let their bill deficiency limit them. To compensate, they pierce the base of flowers and sip the nectar. It's quite the sneaky shortcut. This foraging strategy is called "nectar robbing". The nectar robbers take the nectar without entering a flower's natural opening, which means that they don't come in contact with the floral reproductive structures and pollination does not occur.
Long-tailed Sylphs are sexually dimorphic: the males are the ones with the impressively, elongated tail feathers, while females have shorter, more modest tail feathers. The feathers of the males are so long that they actually hinder his flight, and consequently his survival. But, his beautiful finery serves a purpose as females choose males with the longest tail feathers for mating. This ensures that they are mating with a fit male, who was strong and crafty enough to survive until breeding age, despite his encumbrance. And, it makes sense that females lack long tail feathers because they would make it awfully difficult to lay and incubate eggs.
This stunning species is yet another example of the beauty, resilience, and utter brilliance exhibited in nature! {Spotted in Colombia by JungleDragon founder, Ferdy Christant} #JungleDragon Posted 6 years ago