I have some beautiful heliconia plants outside my bathroom window that are commonly visited by hummingbirds. A few days ago I observed a small and delicate looking hummingbird making serious attempts to scare off a plump bird who, had perched on the same plant. With kamikaze dives and swoops this little hummingbird made all attempts to scare off the ‘invader’ to its territory of nectar.

It was a captivating natural show to watch whilst brushing my teeth in the morning! And it made me remember the presentation I had seen last year in Dominica by John Kress, a botanist a curator from the Smithsonian Institution. He was showing the latest evidence collected to show the remarkable co-evolutionary dance between the species of hummingbirds and heliconias in the Caribbean. Continue reading "Hummingbirds and Heliconias"