Always stunning, amazingly active, very colorful and so hard to get them on photo: the hummingbirds. And there are a lot of them flying around in Costa-Rica (about 52 different species). They are everywhere, in the forest, on the roadside, in the gardens. In all places where flowers are blooming, there are hummingbirds around. Sometimes they even come hovering next to your ear, like they are inspecting you. And they really hum, like a big insect.

They feed on the nectar of flowers, which is only available in small amount, so they have to do a lot of flying and hovering to get to all the food they need. But they do it so effectively that they just spend 10 to 15% of their time feeding; the other 75 to 80 % they are resting and digesting. In several places you see plastic feeders for scientific research, or just to attract hummingbirds. And the birds love them. They are flying back and forth, fighting over the feeder, sitting on the branches nearby.

Profile portrait of a female Magenta-throated Woodstar hummingbird in flight in Monteverde cloudforest in central Costa Rica. This photo was made with natural light only, and handheld with a Canon 5DIII and a 100mm f/2.8L lense at close range in the presence of a feeder near the entrance of Monteverde Bosque Nuboso National Park in central Costa Rica.