Colibri

A hummingbird in flight is wondrous. The small body seems to hang suspended without support, the wings beating so rapidly they are imperceptible to human sight (although not to the camera). The rapid, frenetic movements as the tiny bird moves left or down, or sideways or up seem to obey no pattern. Trying to follow the bird's flight is more like following the movements of a bumble-bee than a bird.

Along my regular west to east walk across Quito--back to my apartment after Spanish class--there is a two-block stretch of road so steep that steps replace asphalt. It is an unlikely concession to foot traffic in this pedestrian-unfriendly city and it is one of the highlights of my 40-minute walk. The steps are bordered on either side by a strip of grass and set amidst the grass is a series of stubbly, flowering trees. The trees are in bloom at the moment and the little flowers look like minuscule, orange trumpets. The other day, darting between the flowers, I saw a hummingbird.

The sight of the tiny bird, contentedly sucking nectar just a few feet away left me staring in wonder. I've never been much of a bird watcher, but hummingbirds have always fascinated me. They are so tiny, so delicate, that after staring at one all other birds seem clumsy, lumbering beasts.

Hummingbirds--known as colibri in Spanish (that has a nice ring to it, I think, even better than hummingbird)--are notoriously sensitive to pollution and this city would seem too dirty to harbor the delicate birds. In fact, one of the most exhaust-choked places in my long commute is not two blocks downhill from where I saw the bird. There, the fumes are so bad I am often left coughing and out of breath. How could a hummingbird possibly live so close to that? It must just be a random bird that strayed into town from the hills nearby, I thought. Soon it would either fly away or die, I reasoned, and so I snapped as many pictures of the bird as I could before it tired of my stalking and zipped off to a higher tree.

I found a picture on the internet of a bird that resembles the one I saw (see left, photo by Paul Pratt). It's called a White-necked Jacobin. What a cruel name to give to this lovely bird; it makes the gentle creature sound like a rabble-rousing revolutionary. In my picture of the bird (right) you can see the similar shape of the head and curve of the beak.

The very next day I saw two of the birds working the same tree. I smiled at the thought that my little jacobin had a mate and his life on the rough streets of Quito would not be a lonely one, that his existence here was not a fluke of nature. I imagined the pair having chicks that would--with luck--survive to spread to other trees nearby. At that moment, as I snapped more pictures, a mother and her young son stopped on the steps to stare with me.

The street that is home to all this excitement is Ernesto Noboa Caamano--but everyone here simply calls it Noboa. Ernesto Noboa was a poet. He was born in 1891 in the gritty seaport of Guyaquil and died 36 years later here in Quito. His short life could not have been pleasant. He suffered from neurosis and became addicted to the morphine that gave him temporary relief. I can't yet read his poems but he was an admirer of Poe and Baudelaire so I imagine they must be brooding and dark, just the types of poems I enjoy. I look forward to the day when I can search his stanzas for clues to his life and to life in Jazz-age Quito. But will I find intimations of urban colibri?

A few days later, just after noon when the hot sun draws forth the full fragrance of the flowers, I was amazed to see another hummingbird of an entirely different variety. It had a smaller body than my jacobin but it sported an impossibly long tail. I fumbled blindly for my camera, trying to retrieve it from my backpack without taking my eyes off the tiny bird as it went zipping in and out of view between the branches. Then, for a split second, it stopped and perched on a limb in the bright sunshine, as if posing for his picture. The lucky shot shows him in all his majesty. Of the dozen pictures I snapped during those minutes, only a few show the bird at all. Most are just shots of thickets of branches, leaves, and flowers.

After the bird flitted off out of range for the last time, I rushed home to learn what type of hummingbird I had encountered this time on the smoggy streets of Quito. After looking through dozens of web pages devoted to the hummingbirds of this region, the best I can guess is that my new bird is a Long-tailed Sylph, although the one on Noboa street has a tail significantly longer than the ones in the pictures on line. Perhaps the city version of the bird sports a longer tail than his countryfied counsins I saw pictured on the web; think of it as the avian version of an urbane gentleman in his smoking jacket.

At left you can see my picture of the sylph in flight, its wings a blur as it strains to insert its beak into the horn or the flower, its tail so long that it stretches out of the frame.

Now, every day as I climb the steps of Noboa street on my way home I stop and stare into each of the trees to look for my friends. As I do, I can't help but think that Ernesto Noboa would smile if he knew that on the rough and smoggy streets of Quito--surrounded by walls covered in graffiti--colibri thrive.

Hummingbird Habitat