Here’s one little bird that lives up to its billing.
The fiery-throated hummingbird has plumage that’s mostly green and blue, but its throat is red, orange and yellow. You know, like a flame.
The species lives in the mountains of Costa Rica and Panama, where it feeds on nectar and the occasional insect or spider.
These photos were taken last April by Jess Findlay, a 24-year-old nature photographer from Vancouver, Canada. He explained the encounter in an email to The Huffington Post:
“Several of these beautiful hummingbirds were visiting a nectar feeder at about 2,700-meter elevation in the Talamanca Mountains of Costa Rica. As they fed hungrily, often quarreling with one another, occasionally one would get displaced onto a nearby branch. ... What made this a challenge was how fidgety these birds can be and the fact that the full spectrum of color is only seen when they pause at a very specific angle.”
The bird is as small as it is beautiful, measuring only about 11 centimeters (4.3 inches) in length and weighing about 5.7 grams (0.2 ounce). But in hummingbird terms, Panterpe insignis is medium-sized ― not as big as the aptly named giant hummingbird but way bigger than the bee hummingbird, which is the world’s tiniest living bird.
