Tiny, amazing, brilliantly colored hummingbirds. Birder Jon Dunn takes the reader along as he travels the Americas to see as many species as possible. From the northernmost range of rufous hummingbirds in Alaska, to the southern tip of Argentina to find the endangered firecrown. He’s especially keen on finding rare ones. The book is a seamless blend of travel narrative with vivid depictions of his bird sightings, and a little bit of everything about their physiology and history. I was fascinated by the description of how a hummingbird’s tongue works (it’s not like a straw). Intrigued by how many ancient cultures placed hummingbirds high in mythology and even numbered them among deities. In other places they were considered good-luck charms or curatives- so sadly there are many accounts in this book of how thousands and thousands of hummingbirds became tiny corpses for people to use as love charms. Or to decorate their hats, in the past. So dismaying. There’s also interesting stories about how scientists tried to sabotage each other’s work, to appear to be the first to discover an unknown species, or even made up new species that didn’t really exist (sewing together various parts of different birds to create fakes). In the present, it’s stories of wanton habitat destruction. But lovely, lovely to read about living birds the author saw in person. His writing in their praise is aptly full of wonder and beautiful words. And it’s encouraging to read of local and indigenous people in far-off lands who once took their local hummingbirds for granted, but now protect them, feed them and guide travelers to see them. He goes to Arizona, Mexico City, Cuba, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
Overall I liked this book. Though sometimes it seemed to veer too far into details on the sidelines (I didn’t really need the life history of half the people the author met). So many beautiful birds are shown in photographs in the center spread, but there were many more described vividly in the text I just to go look them up. Like the golden-tailed sapphire. Or any of the spatulae-tails. Just wow.
Borrowed from the public library.