Good morning, Newdists. Can you believe it’s already the 12th of September? What a year it’s been. I hope you all are holding up.
My computer saga continues as my main route to blogging — my desktop — is still sputtering and holding hostage all my images and files. I’m coming to you now on my spouse’s laptop. Which limits what images I can load. Hence, this is our diary bird today.
Humming birds can slow their metabolism which in turn allows them to live in cold places like the high Andes.
I hope you’ll read the full article, it’s pretty cool.👇
High in the Andes, thousands of meters above sea level, speedy hummingbirds defy near-freezing temperatures. These tiny flyers endure the cold with a counterintuitive trick: They lower their body temperature—sometimes as much as 33°C—for hours at a time, new research suggests.
“It’s a capacity that’s just incredible,” says Anusha Shankar, a physiological ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, who was not involved with the study.✂️
In this state, called torpor, a bird is motionless and unresponsive. “You wouldn’t even know it was alive if you picked it up,” Wolf says. But when the morning comes and it’s time to feed, he says, the birds quickly warm themselves back up again. “It’s like hibernation but regulated on an even tighter schedule.”
White-booted racket-tail hummingbird
.
This tiny forest sprite is found at middle elevations in Andean cloud forest, from around 1,000–2,200 m. The male is one of the most distinctive hummingbirds with his long tail rackets and prominent white or orange leg puffs. Females can be identified by their white underparts with variable amounts of spotting, short straight bill, leg puffs, and tiny size. Beware female whitetips, which have very similar plumage but are larger and longer-billed and do not have leg puffs. Can be seen foraging at low or middle levels of forest and edges. Visits feeders. LINK
.
Blue-throated Hillstar —
.
This spectacular hummingbird was only discovered in 2017, and made headlines when it was described as a new species to science a year later. It is currently known only from one mountain in the Andes of southwestern Ecuador called Cerro de Arcos. Male’s entirely blue throat separates it from the otherwise similar Ecuadorian Hillstar, which does not overlap in range. Female is much duller than male, with greenish upperparts, brownish belly, and green speckles on the throat. Found in paramo at very high elevations, where it feeds on Chuquiraga flowers, which are orange and shaped like tiny pine cones. LINK
.
.
"Páramos that have been burned recover very slowly and lose biodiversity," said Freile. A smattering of grass species then takes over and the shrubs disappear.
Some farmers also clear the grasslands for fields of potatoes, onions, beans, and grains. About 15 to 20 years ago, when communities brought nonnative pines to the plateau to harvest pulp for paper, the pine plantations began pushing the páramo ecosystem farther and farther from its natural state.
Suffice it to say, the threats to the blue-throats are piling up—and it's unclear whether the species will be able to handle them. Hummingbirds already push the limits of what's possible in terms of energy in and energy out. They are flying acrobats that beat their wings so fast the human eye can't see them, and their little hearts surpass 1,200 beats per minute. But they must replace the calories they burn, and rapidly, or risk death by exhaustion.
.
.
Mountains
.
Humantay, Peru
.
Thorung La Pass, Annapurna Circuit, Nepal.
.
Cordillera Huayhuash Reserved Zone, Peru
.
Cerro Miscanti and Laguna, Chile.
.
Medicine Bow Peak, Wy.
.
New Day Cafe is an open thread.
What do you want to talk about today?