Costa Ricas motto is Pura Vida - Pure Life - and this deceptively small country is bursting with some of the most spectacular wildlife and pristine ecosystems in the world. All this diversity thrives, in part, thanks to one surprising little creature: hummingbirds. THE HUMMINGBIRD EFFECT ventures across Costa Ricas wild and rugged landscapes to discover the countrys dazzling diversity of hummingbirds, revealing how these tiny creatures play an outsize role in maintaining some of the richest and wildest environments on Earth. Since their first explosive appearance in the Americas over 20 million years ago, hummingbirds have rapidly evolved into some of the most iridescent and colorful birds in the world. Their specialized bodies make them masters of astonishing aerobatic flight, perfectly engineered for harvesting sugary nectar from flowers. In turn, the plants they pollinate have evolved alongside them in one of the most transformative partnerships in the natural world. In the otherworldly highland cloud forest, we encounter one of the rarest and most elusive hummingbirds, the White-tipped Sicklebill. Well discover how these elusive birds with their startlingly curved beaks evolved in partnership with a single species of plant, whose blossoms are perfectly angled to fit their sickled bills. Well also reveal how through pollination, this hummingbird-plant partnership provides a critical food source for a whole community of creatures in the trees and on the forest floor. We travel from the highlands to the remote Osa peninsula, a truly wild tropical paradise, where Howler monkeys, acrobatic spider monkeys, majestic scarlet macaws and a host of charismatic ground mammals all depend on the fruits of the hummingbirds labor. Well discover rarely seen hummingbird behaviors, from single nesting moms rearing their young to a glimpse of how they bathe and groom, to how the Long-Billed Hermit attracts mates by performing in a talent show called a lek, even squeezing a whole song into a chirp. In Costa Rica, hummingbirds are the little architects of almost every environment even the most extreme. On the forbidding moonscape of the countrys tallest volcanic peaks, well meet the rugged hummingbirds that are perfectly adapted to high-altitude life: the aggressive and rainbow-hued Fiery Throated Hummingbird, the Talamanca, named after its home mountain range, and the impossibly small Volcano Hummingbird, a master of the high frontier. Throughout the highlands, well see how other fruit-eating bird species, like the Silky Flycatcher and one of the worlds most ornate and beautiful birds, the Resplendent Quetzal, depend on the hummingbirds pollination. In the coastal mangroves, the highly elusive mangrove hummingbird keeps the salty tangle of trees in flower, providing fruit for boisterous families of White-faced Capuchin monkeys. From volcanic peaks to coastal jungles, misty cloud forests to sprawling mangroves, THE HUMMINGBIRD EFFECT reveals how through feeding, pollinating and living their miraculous little lives, these glittering, jewel-feathered birds bring food, color and life to the crossroads of the Americas.
