Fast-motion aerial combat ebbed and flowed around the feeders as dozens of hummingbirds advanced and retreated in tight circles and high-G elliptical maneuvers. I made a much lower-speed circle just in time to capture a few frames of this lone blue-chested hummingbird feeding on porterweed flowers before it disappeared in a blur. Given only this one short observation from my stationary perspective, it would be almost impossible to understand what this bird was actually doing. But if I could zoom out and manage to trace its blinding movements, I would see a perfectly optimized circuit that would return it to this same plant thirty or forty minutes hence, because blue-chested hummingbirds are “trapliners” (as is the tamarin on the cover). They visit the same plants, in the same order, every day, like a trapper checking his snares. The flowers know this, having co-evolved with these emerald and blue pollinators. The porterweed refills its flowers with nectar on the same schedule, a botanical circle in time synchronized with an avian circle in space, all part of the interlocking and invisible rhythms of nature.
BLUE-CHESTED HUMMINGBIRD (Polyerata amabilis)