The Story
I photographed this Empress Brilliant (Heliodoxa imperatrix) at Avistamiento de Aves Doña Dora, in Dagua, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, in February 2020. It lives only in Colombia and Ecuador. Adult males have a mostly dark green face and breast with a square pale violet patch in the middle of the throat, while females are bronzy green above. Besides perching at Marcgravia flowers, it hovers under drooping Ericaceae blossoms to feed. The few nests known were cups of tree-fern scales bound with spider silk and lined with seed fluff. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I used a Pentax K-1 with the HD Pentax-D FA 150-450mm f/4.5-5.6 for this one, at 1/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600, −1 EV. Visitors can see between 28 and 60 species in a day there, in an area of less than 150 square meters.
©2023 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Empress Brilliant (Heliodoxa imperatrix) 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 2024), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List