My Temple of Nature: Humdinger Hummingbirds II

In my original Humdinger Hummingbirds post, I touched on the variety of hummingbirds that exist and how they are different. With over 300 species, I barely scratched the surface so I decided to do another post featuring some of the spectacular hummingbirds found only in South America. In fact the majority of species occur in South and Central America with only 48 species living and/or breeding in the U.S. and Mexico. Hummingbirds are only found in the Western Hemisphere so if you are thinking of going to Europe to bird watch for hummingbirds, you will be sadly disappointed because you will find nary a one. If you want more pictures and information on the hummingbirds of South America, you can click here.

Like many bird species, males are more colorful than their female counterparts. Unless noted, the photo is the male member of the species. (Okay, so call me a female chauvinist.)

Hummingbirds come in all kinds of colors and combinations.

Amazilla Hummingbird Source: Wikipedia

Ruby-topaz hummingbird Source: Wikipedia

Blue-chinned saphire Source: Wikipedia

Juan Fernandez Firecrown Source: Wikipeida

Velvet Purple Coronet Source: Wikipedia

Not only are the males and females colored differently, sometimes they look like entirely different species.

Male Violet-crowned woodnymph Source: Wikipedia

Female Violet-crowned Woodnymph

From those photos, you might think the female is larger than the male, but the opposite is actually true.

As you can also see, they may be tiny birds, but they can have an attitude!

In another example of the difference in sexes...

Female Long-tailed Sylph

Male Long-tailed Sylph

only the male has the long tail. And the tail does matter - when the female looks for a mate, she chooses the male with the longest one.

Some hummingbirds seem to shy away from the limelight with such colorful eye-catching plumage, but they can't help but show just a little flash.