The Blue-bearded Helmet-crest, is one of Nature’s most magnificient creatures. It is a large hummingbird with a long crest and a beard, making it somehow antropomorph. Read the more poetic description written by Sir John Gould himself: “These bearded birds stand quite alone among the Trochilidae and although not remarkable for brilliancy of colour, their […]
This species is known from two specimens, and a single sighting in the 1990s and only three other reports. It is classified as Critically Endangered on the basis of a very small population which is probably in ongoing decline. It is a 28cm, large, dark owlet-nightjar. Plumage rather uniformly vermiculated grey-brown and black. The short […]
An Indian went hunting one day far away from his hut, so far indeed that when he thought of returning night overtook him. Losing his path in the darkness, ho lay down to sleep under an overhanging wood-ants’ nest. These insects asked him by and by if he were asleep, and he told them “Not […]
Not far from Rainbow Cave on the Sacred Mountain in what is now New Mexico, Hummingbird Hoya lived with his beloved grandmother long ago. “I think I will go to Kiakima to see what their clansmen are doing,” Hoya said one day to his beloved grandmother. Because he was so small and wanted to be […]
In the usual acceptation of the term this is one of the commonest species of Humming-bird with which we are acquainted; in using the word commonest, I intend to convey that it is a bird which has long been known and sent to Europe in great abundance ; all other species will, however, doubtless become […]
I have looked in vain for a name and description of this very familiar species, which is quite as common in our collections as the Thaumatias leucogaster. The only published figure which at all resembles the bird is that given by Lesson, under the appellation of Omhmya albirostris, in his ” Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux […]
This plate is from around 1850, it was then called White-breasted Emerald (Thaumatias candidus) and the information states: The Thaumatias candidus ranges widely over the southern parts of Mexico and Guatemala, and, judging from the number of specimens which have been transmitted to Europe through the instrumentality of De Lattre, Salle, Skinner, and Salvin, it […]
This plate is from around 1850, it was then called White-throat (Leucochloris albicollis) and the information states: The southern part of Brazil alone, so far as we yet know, is the native country of this very pretty and well-marked species, and numerous are the specimens that from time to time are sent to Europe from […]
This plate is from around 1850, it was then called White-breasted Leucippus (Leucippus chionogaster) and the information states: If this bird had been one of the most beautiful, instead of one of the plainest and most modestly attired species of the family, it could scarcely have received a greater degree of attention than has been […]
This plate is from around 1850, it was then called dOcas Amazili (Amazilia Ocai) and the information states: The only example I have yet seen of this very distinct species of Humming-Bird was obtained at Xalapa in Southern Mexico, by M. Rafael Montes d’Oca. I have placed this new bird in the genus Amazilia, because […]