Shining Honeycreeper, Tranquilo Bay Lodge, Panama

I have over 1000 images from my 6 days at Tranquilo Bay Lodge and the surrounding area in Panama…and those are only the keepers! This is a Shining Honeycreeper taken from the deck at the main Lodge building on my second day there…in a moment of lighter rain. You can see how wet the bird is. The rain was not typical of the season. April should be the beginning of the dry season, but the rains had ended early this year, and the Lodge, which exists totally on collected rain water, was in need of some rain to fill the tanks. (And I was glad I could help…I told them to just let me know the next time the tanks got low, and I would come down so it could rain for a week 🙂 The Shining Honeycreeper is one of three Honeycreepers that frequent the rain-forest around the Lodge: Shining, Green, and Red-legged. The Shining and Red-legged look very much alike, except for the legs, and the Green is not green at all (at least not the male) but a lovely turquoise with a black mask. All of the females are some shade of green, from olive for the Red-legged to leaf on the Green. They are all relatives of the Tanagers.

Nikon P900 at 1500mm equivalent field of view (cropped slightly for scale). 1/30 @ ISO 900 @ f6.3 (which makes this shot totally unlikely! Handheld at 1/30th? Not possible! The Nikon P900 not only survived the tropics, it exceeded all expectations!) Processed in Topaz Denoise and Lightroom.