It had been a frustrating morning, as rainforest birding so often is; made even trickier by bright sunshine and high winds, which meant the birds were even more elusive than usual. After two hours’ effort in the central highlands of Panama, the number of species we had seen was still in single figures.
Then our guide Jorge noticed a tiny movement in the dense foliage, and there it was: the bird I had waited almost six decades to see. A small, dark hummingbird, perched conveniently at eye level, just a few metres in front of me.
As I looked through Jorge’s telescope, the bird, which until then had its back to me, turned around. This momentarily revealed an iridescent flash of colour on its crown, which gives the species its name: violet-capped hummingbird.
After a quick preen to tidy up its ruffled feathers, the bird flew off into the forest, leaving nothing but a memory of this fleeting, yet very special, encounter.
Special, because this little hummer is rare and very restricted in range: virtually endemic to Panama, apart from a tiny population just across the border in Colombia. But even more so because, after a lifetime’s birding, this was the 3,000th species I had ever seen. Ornithological trainspotting, perhaps; yet still, for me, a moment of pure joy.
