Close Up on the Green Crowned Brilliant Hummingbird
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In 1851, during the large exhibition of London, in England, a collection of hummingbirds in plush attracted more than 75,000 people, including Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin. The collector, John Gould, had prepared 1,500 birds to display in glass cases. Probably among them was the brilliant green crown (HELIODOXA jacula) Of its vast collection, illustrated here with silhouette in its native habitat, which extends through the Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador.
The hummingbirds are only endemic to the Americas, hence the interest of members of the British public who may have never seen iridescent avian precious stones. Darwin met the hummingbirds for the first time during his trip to the HMS Beagle 19 years before the exhibition and was then struck by their catchy plumage. The feathers with bird jewelry tones inspired him to consider the role that sexual selection plays in evolution.
In Peru, hummingbirds are sometimes considered the soul of the visit of dead parents.
The brilliant males with green crown have luminescent green-tourmaline crowns, emerald breast feathers and a cobalt stain in the throat; In the sun’s rays, flying males could be confused with green and blue lights. The brilliant green crown female is decidedly less brilliant. Its plumage is a little less shimmering, and it does not have a vibrant blue plot: its elegance comes from a beautiful white band under its eye and from Green White Mille-Partis. Both sexes have for a long time fork. Stay around 4.7 inches – Imagine the height of a beerHELIODOXA jacula is relatively large for a hummingbird.
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All the hummingbirds are part of the Trochilidae family, 360 species in number, the most identified for Western science by Gould. In Victorian fashion, Gould has often relied on others to make him specimens on the ground.
The collectors would have trapped along the wooded edges of the clearings and through highly wooded highlands up to 6,562 feet altitude to capture HELIODOXA jacula. The fact that the hummingbirds move so well between the mountains and the bass lands, and between the sky and the earth, is a source of inspiration for several indigenous cultures. In Peru, hummingbirds are sometimes considered the soul of the visit of dead parents. In some parts of Mexico, a hummingbird is called the resurrection bird. At Costa Rica, a hummingbird –bu.tzún In the Bribri language – inside a house relays the news that visitors will arrive that day or the next day.
The wild hummingbirds eat small insects and nectar. But in many regions of the Americas, it is not uncommon to see red colored feeders filled with a mixed sugar and water mixture – passing the concentration of nectar sugar – keeping porches or nearby windows. People are so in love with these flying to feathered jewels that we want a narrower communion.
The feeders have enabled all kinds of photographers, from amateurs to professionals, to document the beauty of the hummingbirds, a bit like what Gould did with its taxidermal display. But photographer Guy Edwardes sought a more natural scene when he visited the Forest of Clouds at Costa Rica. To see birds in the wild, he had to look up. There, they were, sipping of the nectar, silhouetté against the canopy arborescent backlit, looking at the intangible, as if they would exchange the earth for the sky.
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Guy Edwardes is a professional landscape, a fauna and a travel photographer based in Dorset, England. He works with several leading images libraries, and his work appeared in publications such as The telegraph, the goalkeeperAnd Reader digest. He also published two books on the photography technique.
This story is adapted from a article which appeared in biographicalAn independent magazine on nature and regeneration powered by California Academy of Sciences.
