The Story
I photographed this Blue-headed Sapphire (Chrysuronia grayi) near El Rosario, in the Patía valley of Nariño, Colombia. It is found only in Colombia and Ecuador, in inter-Andean valleys from Valle del Cauca south to Pichincha, mostly between 500 and 2,000 meters. It seems able to use altered, open and cultivated land, which matters because much of its original habitat has been turned into farmland. Besides nectar, it catches insects by hawking from a perch or gleaning them from vegetation. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I photographed him with a Canon R5 and the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender, at 1/180 sec, f/16, ISO 1600, +0.5 EV. In 2018, bird monitoring by the Humboldt Institute in the dry forests of Mercaderes, Taminango and El Rosario recorded 80 species.
©2022 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Blue-headed Sapphire (Chrysuronia grayi) belongs to the family Trochilidae (Hummingbirds) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2022), with the population trend listed as stable. Source: IUCN Red List
