The Story
This female Speckled Hummingbird (Adelomyia melanogenys) perched briefly among purple flowers at La Minga Ecolodge in Dapa, near Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia. Soft light filtering through the canopy lit her evenly against the greens and purples around her. This species lives in Andean cloud forests. Females build the nest, incubate and feed the young without help from males, and the nest is a bulky cup of moss and cobweb lined with plant fiber. IUCN lists it as Least Concern. It has glossy green to bronze upperparts and pale underparts flecked with green and bronze, with a black cheek patch below the eye.
I made this frame with a Canon R5 and the RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1L, at 1/1000 sec, f/6.7, ISO 800, −0.5 EV. La Minga sits in the cloud forest of the Kilometer 18 area, about an hour from Cali.
©2024 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Speckled Hummingbird (Adelomyia melanogenys) 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