The Story
I photographed this Geoffroy’s Daggerbill (Schistes geoffroyi) at the Otún Quimbaya Fauna and Flora Sanctuary near Pereira, Risaralda, Colombia on June 20, 2017. It lives inside and along the edges of dense cloud forest. It takes nectar from tubular flowers of shrubs, vines and small trees and catches small insects on the wing. It is a hummingbird named for its bill, whose tip is very narrow and sharply pointed. 307 bird species have been recorded in the sanctuary, about 16 percent of all the birds known from Colombia, eight of them found nowhere else.
I took this with a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM, at 1/1000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600. IUCN lists the Geoffroy’s Daggerbill as Least Concern with a decreasing population, and the Otún Quimbaya sanctuary, declared in 1996, is part of a conservation corridor along the upper Otún that links Los Nevados National Natural Park with regional reserves.
©2018 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Geoffroy’s Daggerbill (Schistes geoffroyi) 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