Consolation Prize

By our last field day, we had no sound recordings, no high-speed video, and no decent pictures of the Gorgeted Woodstar.  What were we supposed to expect from a species that is so poorly known?  I guess we have been spoiled by our success in studying other bee hummingbirds.  Of the 21 species I have helped Chris track down so far, we have only had two species that didn’t displays for us.  But for these two, the Magenta-throated Woodstar of Costa Rica and the Sparkling-tailed Woodstar of Guatemala, at least I got a few decent photos.  

Bug Photographer's Paradise

We decided to relocate to the Wild Sumaco lodge for the last two days of fieldwork because we knew the woodstars visited there regularly.  Getting to the lodge turned out to be a little tricky.  A few days earlier, a Coca Cola delivery truck had overturned on a bridge on its way to deliver its goods to – get this – the city of Coca.  We needed to cross this bridge to get to the lodge and we were considered abandoning the car, fording the river, and getting picked up on the other side.  We were getting desperate to see any woodstars, even if they weren’t going to display for us. 

Amazon At Last

After five days of looking for woodstars, it is clear that we are here at the wrong time of year.  We have seen several males visiting flowers, but they aren’t defending territories or showing any interest in the nearby females.  Since we have no hope of getting data at this point, we decided to blow off a day and go visit the lowland rainforest.  The Amazon jungle starts a few thousand feet below our field site and stretches across the continent to the Atlantic Ocean.  It is so vast that referring to it as a single entity doesn’t make sense because it is made up of so many different forest types.  Still, “the Amazon” has been in my dreams for as long as I can remember and this was my first chance to set foot in it. 

My Kind Of Place

Any place that takes its hammocks seriously is my kind of place. I am at the Yanayacu Biological Station in the Napo province of eastern Ecuador in search of the Gorgeted Woodstar (Chaetocercus heliodor). This trip is part of a 3-year study to describe the courtship displays of all the bee hummingbirds. This group of hummingbirds consists of about 3 dozen species that range from Alaska to Chile and includes the Anna’s Hummingbird and Ruby-throated Hummingbird. The lead scientist, Chris Clark, discovered that these hummingbirds actually produce sounds using their tail feathers during their courtship displays.  Chris’ research was featured along with my photographs in the September 9th issue of the journal Science.

Hello!

After many years of procrastination and a couple of false starts, I have finally decided to give this blogging thing a try.  I am not yet sure what my aim is in creating this blog, but I figure at its best it could be a wonderful platform for exchanging ideas about biology, photography, and whatever else happens to catch my fancy.   My career so far has benefited tremendously from resources extracted from the blogosphere so maybe it is time I jumped in and played an active role.  The worst case scenario is that I will get lazy and this will become nothing more than another online space for shameless self-promotion.  We'll see which way it goes...

I consider myself a bit of a gear head so expect some content focused on new toys (kite photography, infrared triggers, motorized sliders, etc.)  I will do my best to include fun stories from the field, but there are strict embargo policies for the National Geographic projects I work on so I will have to wait to publish those.  Hopefully there will be enough interesting things going on in the meantime to keep you entertained.  Of course, I always welcome your feedback.

anand