Garden photography is a nice and easy way to get in touch with wildlife and get nice pictures or find new species for your bird-watching list. I love having bird feeders in my garden and over the years I have observed over 35 different species of birds, some of them very rare, I've had a flock of wild grey grouse live in my yard, and now I am probably supporting something like 200+ birds in winter and migration time. In the summer those lazy free-loaders fend for themselves. Some nest here year after year. It's a lot of fun, once you set up a source of food for the small birds (and mice and squirrels and other noisy, plain but tasty morsels) they will draw in more shy and rare birds, even predators. I guess it's even more fun if you live in the tropics.

Now, locals don't always care about wildlife or even know what lives right next to them, and that's a damn shame. But some of them are nice enough not only to give all the little critters a good place to have an easy meal but let photographers use this opportunity as well. Michael knew a very nice guy in the nearby village who had two feeders set up - one for hummingbirds, one for other birds. This was a great chance to see new species of small gems up close. 

It was great, we were sitting in some shade in the garden, our host offered us green coconuts (I love green coconuts and lost count of how many I had in my two weeks in Costa Rica). However, there was one serious down side in all of this set up for me. Before coming to Costa Rica I was warned about blood-sucking gnats and I brought a fine mesh jacket, I was prepared. But at the lodge there was no sign of mozzies or gnats of any kind, so I kind of assumed I won't need my mesh jacket in this place too. Boy, was I wrong. I was wearing a t-shirt, and my elbows, wrists and fingers were soon covered with tiny black flies, all sucking my coconut water (and probably rum) laced blood. As much as I tried swatting them away, I had to stay focused on the birds I was shooting, so they must have sucked something like a pint of blood out of me. In the end my arms were all covered in gnat bites and swollen horribly, my joints that the insects seemed to be more attracted to were aching for days. It wore off soon enough, but the bite marks remained visible for a while. It did not look good.

Anyway, let's have a look at the many beautiful birds I saw in that garden. None of these have any remarkable qualities or special behavior as far as I know, but they are all drop-dead gorgeous. The Golden-hooded Tanager looks a lot like a sparrow in everything but color. It came to the bigger feeders back at the lodge, but it didn't fit in with the regulars there. Here, on smaller moss-covered branches among smaller birds it fit right in.

Sexual dimorphism is a very interesting thing - it is the difference in shape and size and appearance between males and females. Birds exhibit it very often in the difference between the flashy and sometimes bizarre looks of the males and the camouflaged plumage of the females. In the jungle the camo can be emerald green and the females are sometimes just as pretty as the males, maybe even more. Meet the Blue Dacnis.

The male is dressed in a beautiful shade of blue.

And here's Mrs.Blue Dacnis. I found her just as good-looking as her mate. 

The Green Honeycreepers are also a gorgeous couple. The male is sporting such striking turquoise plumage that I could not get enough of this little bird.

His mate is a bit more modest in color, but is still a nice shade of lime.

In Venezuela a intergeneric hybrid between the Blue Dacnis and the Green Honeycreeper was discovered in the 19th century, it was called the Purplish Honeycreeper. It is only known from some remains in the British Museum, no more live specimens have been found. 

I was so focused on the zoomed-in image o the birds in the view-finder of my camera that I didn't notice how small they were until a Clay-colored Robin - a blackbird-sized bird - landed at the feeder.

I also was lucky enough to discover a bird I wanted to shoot in Canada but never got the chance until we both migrated South. The Baltimore Oriole is in no way related to the Old World Orioles. It feeds mostly on insects, sometimes adding fruit to the diet. It even drinks nectar from hummingbird feeders. Once the birds establish themselves at a regular feeding sight they will even bring their young to it. I was lucky to see an adult male and an almost grown juvenile.

Some regulars swung by. The Great Kiskdees and the Orange-chinned Parakeets were much more mild-mannered than at the big feeders at the lodge.

And, of course there were some birds we only saw here, maybe because they preferred this habitat or couldn't compete with the larger birds at the lodge.

The Black-cheeked Woodpecker.

And the Scarlet-rumped Tanager. Actually, this is the name which unites two species, the Passerini's Tanager and the Cherrie's Tanager, that are so closely related, the only way to tell them apart is by looking at the females. I suspect it was the Passerini's Tanager because I shot it in the Northern part of the country, but because I didn't see a female to confirm this, I will stick to the general name for the two.

A pair of tiny Olive-backed Euphonias were quite cute but timid birds, the male somewhat more colorful than his spouse as is more traditional for birds.

But don't feel sorry for the little lady and the likes of her. The males may be flashy and have some interesting routines to attract their mates, but in the long run it's these modestly colored girls who win the genetic game and they are the ones in charge. When I was doing some research for my university diploma I had to read a lot of books on ethology and, naturally, had to use the work of Konrad Lorenz, the founding father of ethology - the science of animal behavior. I came across his theory that it's the females who determine the future appearance of their species. Males do the competing, females do the choosing, ultimately shaping the path for future generations. Apparently, males are the material with which nature experiments more - more mutations occur in the male population than in females. But it's up to the girls to decide whether the new things get a future. Males are on the cutting edge, but nature treats them as expendable material, many of them don't even get a chance to pass their genes on. Girls, on the other hand, are almost certain to mate and pass on their genetic strains. Nature, apparently, is much more female-friendly and ultimately they play the lead role and win the genetic game. Not my theory, but I like it, although I feel sorry for the males. They try so hard, bless their hearts, and it turns out they are evolution's expendable lab rats. Just sounds unfair.

Anyhow, don't mind the modest appearance of this little Euphonia female, she's the boss.

Now we get to the hummers. Now, I promised myself that I will honestly share my bad experience and failures along with the good money shots. This is one of these times. The key to shooting hummingbirds is light and despite it being a sunny day we just didn't have the right lighting set-up. There was what seemed to be enough natural light and we added our flashes to the formula but the wings were still coming out a blur. I will share the right formula later but now I will show what didn't work. The light was insufficient for freeze-photography. The backdrop had natural sunlight behind it whereas the scene itself was in the patchy half-light of the garden. To a human eye that was more than enough, but not so much for the camera and my dark zoom-lens. But even my teammates who were using f2.8 lenses failed to get propper shots. 

There were bees and wasps competing with the hummingbirds and I despite all the shortcomings I kept this image because of the sense of scale.

Sometimes these birds would perch to rest or preen and then I could get a shot of them. I did so with my heart sinking - was I ever going to get the shots I wanted with these birds?

Of course, I did not think that I sacrificed all of that blood to the swarms of gnats for nothing. I still love going over some shots from this shoot, but I needed hummingbird freeze shots. But the trip was not over yet and there were plenty of interesting things waiting for me.

TO BE CONTINUED....