Crowned Woodnymth, Rio Santiago Lodge, Honduras

This is a collage of two shots of the Crowned-Woodnymth Hummingbird taken at Rio Santiago Lodge, in the high rainforest of Honduras. Rio Santiago maintains nearly a hundred feeders on the slope above the lodge, and on the terrace by the outdoor restaurant, and attracts too many hummingbirds to count, During the height of the season, June and July, they go through 435 pounds of sugar a week. I have only visited in February, but I will be back in late June this year. The best part of Rio Santiago, however, is not the feeders, but the abundance of natural perches and blooming flowers, which makes hummingbird photography there, as far as I am concerned, a unique experience.

The Crowned Woodnymth, which was, until recently, called the Violet-crowned Woodnymth, is one of the most colorful of Central American hummingbirds. Blue, green, violet, and black shimmer in almost any light…each so intense that it just about overloads the digital sensor in your camera. I am not sure why they took the violet from its crown. I suspect it is a relumping of some of the closely related crowned woodnympths, which were once considered a single species, then split, and now lumped back together again. This collage shows a bit of the attitude of the bird too. It is a feisty little thing, well capable of seizing its share of the sugar water. It is also one of the more common of Honduran Hummers, so you see a lot of them, both at the Lodge at Pico Bonito, and at the Rio Santiago Lodge.

Two frames from the Nikon P610 at 1100mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/320th @ ISO 1400 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage. If you are interested in joining me in June at the Lodge at Pico Bonito and Rio Santiago Lodge, check out the information on the trip at Point and Shoot Nature Photographer.