rpics: more birds, off to sea

Quite a fdw pics today because we´ll be off the air for about a week due to a snap decision to include a 5 day Galapagos trip that starts Monday.

Today was a long day of birding, in truth with some long dry spells, but we had good weather and managed to ID 46 new (for us) species.

Before that, some shots of some of the hummingbirds in the garden of our hotel. First, the Andean emerald. Note the wing motion, sort of a figure 8 at some incredible number of beats per second, that allows it levitate. Then the rufous tail, the dominant species in the yard.

Next the velvet purple coronet.

Finally, the green crown brilliant. Love these names,

The highlights of our trip today were two trogons, the first the choco (named for this region).

Then the western white tail.

Dana´s binos drew a cool moth.

And our last sighting was this three-toed sloth, which really excited Julia because there apparently aren´t that many around here.