After two days of camping in the cold and remote mountains of northern Colombia, American Carole Turek reached an altitude of 3,000 meters and finally spotted what she was looking for: a little bird measuring just 12 centimeters, one of the rarest in the world, that sipped orange flowers. without caring for the arrival of visitors.
The blue-bearded hummingbird was the 150th species of hummingbird recorded by the 70-year-old photographer. The trip was part of his mission to photograph all 365 species of hummingbirds in the world, which inhabit only the Americas, from Alaska (USA) to Ushuaia (Argentina). As of 2018, she has made 197 registrations in seven countries.
“Hummingbirds are so different from other birds,” Turek told sheet on the huge porch of his home in Studio City, Los Angeles, while dozens of hummingbirds fed at his 16 drinking fountains.
“They fly like insects, they’re the only ones that can fly backwards and even upside down. And you can learn to hand feed them. There’s something certainly magical about them,” he explained.
For her, “the perception that people have of hummingbirds is curious”. “They see them as cute little fairies or messengers from the sky, when in fact they are aggressive, devastating warriors, solitary creatures.”
The trip to northern Colombia took place in February 2020. The blue-bearded hummingbird was considered extinct since the 1940s, until a pair of Colombian researchers found it by chance in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in 2015.
To be able to photograph it, Turek climbed 30 kilometers through the mountains with a team of eight people and four horses, in an expedition set up just for her and with the endorsement of the local indigenous community.
The results of the trip are detailed on their YouTube channel, Hummingbird Spot (youtube.com/c/HummingbirdSpot/ – there are automatic subtitles in Portuguese).
“I knew I had to find him soon because I’m not getting any younger,” said Turek, who is also an anesthesiologist at hospitals in Los Angeles. “I had three months to prepare for this trip. I started working out like crazy, hiking every day and getting a personal trainer.”
Hummingbird T-shirt and doormat
Turek received the report from sheet in a T-shirt emblazoned with her favorite hummingbird, the sylph hummingbird, a picture she took in Peru. The male has two very long feathers that end in bluish discs. On the apartment door, the doormat is also themed.
Her YouTube channel has over 72k subscribers and 5 million views. She posts diaries of her travels on Sundays, as well as having a live camera showing up close the hummingbirds that frequent her porch. There’s also a live link of a camera pointed at a nest.
To maintain her 16 drinking fountains, Turek has the help of her husband and a cleaning lady. During the busiest time, between January and February, he uses up to 40 kilos of sugar a week to prepare the water that is the “fuel” for the birds.
She started feeding hummingbirds 25 years ago, but only recently took a liking to photography. “People look at my photos and think I’ve been shooting for 20, 30 years. The truth is, it’s been a very short time, and the difference is that I have a lot of material to practice,” said Turek, who bought his first professional camera in 2017 and made online courses.
“I used to sit here for hours to photograph them and test the camera settings. You learn fast when you really put your mind to it.”
Over time, she got “a little bored” of always photographing the same visitors and decided to travel to the neighboring state of Arizona, a hummingbird mecca in the US. From there, she fell into the world.
visits to Brazil
In the US, there are just 15 species of hummingbirds, according to the American Bird Conservancy, up from more than 40 in Honduras, the first international stop of Turek’s 2018 photo mission.
Brazil is home to 84 species, of which 16 are endemic (which only occur in the country), according to the National Institute of the Atlantic Forest.
“My husband was super worried when I told him I was going to Honduras alone, but I was going with a local guide and he seemed really nice and I would stay with him all the time,” Turek said of the Honduran William Orellana, from the Beaks and Peaks agency, who ended up becoming his partner in the mission.
Orellana organizes Turek’s tours and is also a cameraman and drone operator on the Hummingbird Spot videos. The pair work with local guides to spot the hummingbirds, and even then, it’s not always an easy task.
“A lot of our work is waiting. Sitting and waiting a lot,” he said, remembering a time in Costa Rica, on the El Tapir reserve, when he spent six hours in front of some plants to get good shots of the hummingbird. whitehead, a red bird with a white tuft.
In Brazil, it has already passed twice. The last one was in September, when he produced nine videos through the Amazon and recorded 11 species of hummingbirds.
Among them were the colorful fire topaz, which Turek called the most beautiful he has ever seen in Brazil, and the very rare tapajós white tail, of which there was no video on the internet until then. To find it, she had the help of Brazilian specialist Jarbas Mattos.
“Carole is very focused and sympathetic, she accepts everything, she is not afraid. It is very pleasant to be able to show what she is looking for. She is passionate, she gets emotional, she just needs to cry”, said Mattos, a biologist and photographer who is birds since 2012.
“We only preserve what we know, and she does just that in the videos”, continued the Brazilian. “It shows the region, the surroundings, the people. It helps to preserve the animal, creating a fantastic knowledge tool.”
With more than 150 species still to be photographed, the American knows she has many adventures ahead, and some perhaps more extreme than climbing remote mountains in Colombia.
“There’s a very complicated little bird that only exists in Colombia, in a region of coca farms,” ​​Turek said. “I don’t think the drug cartels would be too happy to find a lady taking pictures there. But I’ll fix it.”
How to have a happy hummingbird
Tips from Carole Turek
1 – Food
“Hummingbirds drink a lot of nectar and rely on it for energy, but they also eat insects. The sugar water is just their gas to go after the protein.”
2 – Only white sugar
“Always make the nectar one part sugar to four parts water. And only use pure white granulated sugar. Adding brown sugar or honey can harm them. Red ink is no good either.”
3 – Taking care of the nectar
“Like any food, nectar spoils if left in hot temperatures for days on end. Bacteria and fungi grow quickly in the solution, and you don’t want to feed that to hummingbirds. They’ll remember that and won’t come back.”
4 – Always clean
“Every time you fill the water fountain, give it a good cleaning, or at least every two or three days. I put vinegar or hydrogen peroxide in a spray and wet all surfaces, scrub, rinse well and fill it back up”, he teaches.
“If a hummingbird gets thrush on the tongue, the tongue will swell, it won’t be able to drink and it will die a horrible death.”
5 – Fighters
“Once a hummingbird finds its trough, it will protect very aggressively because its life will depend on it. If you want more birds, the solution is usually to hang more troughs, with a certain distance. And be patient.”
