Violet Saberwing: Mirador y Soda Chinchona, Costa Rica — On our first day in the field in Costa Rica, we always stop at Mirador y Soda Chinchona, a small mom-and-pop restaurant and store on Route 126 about 20 minutes beyond La Paz Waterfall Gardens. They have a large covered deck out back, overlooking the San Francisco Waterfall way across the deep valley of the Sarapique River, that is popular with wedding parties and birders. They maintain a good set of tasteful feeders just off the deck that attract many species of the mid-elevations that might otherwise be hard to see. And you get to see them, on a rainy day like we had, from shelter, and with excellent coffee at hand. What could be better? (Okay, I will admit it is pretty spectacular on a day when it is not pouring rain as well.) It is never very light under the trees that tower over the deck, but in the rain, photography can be a challenge. Still, the birds are close and generally cooperative. This Violet Saberwing, Costa Rica’s largest hummingbird according to some sources, and one of its most colorful, used this same perch only a few feet from the deck for most of the 90 minutes we spent there. I took a lot of photos of it. 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixomator Photo and Apple Photos. Equivalent ISO 6400 @ f4 @ 1/25th of a second. The best that even multi-frame noise reduction could manage in that light.