Emerald green

When it comes to bird names, ornithologists are a pretty sober lot. Typically, it's just a color, a body part, a location and a general descriptor: Red-tailed Hawk. Eastern Towhee. Blue Jay. Orange-rumped Parakeet. But when it comes to the hummingbirds, those same staid biologists went rather off the deep end. They were bewitched and bedazzled by the tiny birds, and named them accordingly: sunbeams, angels, emeralds, sapphires, sprites, fairies, comets, woodstars and jewelfronts vie with the plain old "hummingbirds" in the indices of Central and South American bird books. And when you see one in person, you understand why.

A tiny Coppery-headed Emerald doesn't even bend the edge of the leaf he's sitting on.

Humming

Today, it rained -- a soft, wet mist for much of the morning, accompanied by fog so thick we could barely see across the clearing our lodge stands in, much less across the scenic valley that lies below it. We hung out on the balcony, slurping mugs of hot chocolate and watching the birds coming to the feeders. The hummingbirds were particularly enjoyable; somehow, their colors always seem more intense in gloomy weather.

A male White-necked Jacobin rests between feeding bouts.