March Madness is one of those terms that means different things to different people. In the world of college basketball, the term refers to the excitement associated with a grand tournament that leads to the crowning of yet another champion. In the world of birding, however, it is a term that reflects that special state of mind of a person who has been trapped inside for months while looking outside at the same static bird community. In basketball, you go mad with excitement. In the birding world, you go mad with boredom.
Fortunately, this year I have an antidote to the madness. I went to Grand Cayman Island last month and I took 9,000 photos in only four days, adding extensively to my personal image library and to my Life List of bird species. It was utterly amazing and I am still processing the full impact of that visit. I actually had two main goals while I was in the planning stage of this trip, and one of them was to finally track down and collect some high-quality images of a bird called a bananaquit (Coereba flaveola). Mission accomplished!
I first encountered this species on the Caribbean island of St. John. There for my honeymoon in 2004, I found myself in that wonderful situation in which every bird that I saw was something new and unexpected. I crossed paths with a Bananaquit while walking the grounds of the Caneel Bay resort and I did manage to take a few photos, but the bird was a challenge for me. Small, active and almost hyper, the bird seemed to be as fidgety as some warblers and it rarely stopped in a spot with good lighting. My best photo of a bananaquit wasn’t quite perfect, but it was the best I had.
Fast forward 22 years to the present, and things had changed. My skills as a photographer were much improved, my equipment was much better and my choice of location was up there in the “jackpot” category. The bananaquit is a species that feeds extensively on the sugary nectar of flowers. In some places the species is known simply as the sugar bird, and there are reports that certain bold individuals will actually visit outdoor dining venues where they can steal sugar from the tables. The species has a wonderfully decurved beak (meaning it curves downward) that allows it to probe deeply into trumpet-shaped flowers. The beak is also very sharp, which allows it to pierce the sides of larger flowers and get straight to the nectar that way.
I watched a bananaquit do this very thing on the grounds of the estate that I had rented, but the bird was too far away for me to capture enough details to satisfy my desire for the “perfect photo.” Fortunately, Grand Cayman Island had an epic birder’s destination where I could get much closer to them. The Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park stands as an oasis on Grand Cayman Island, which is made of coral and where there are few places where fresh water is abundant. At the Botanic Park, however, the plants were lovingly cared for and watered every morning. Flowering plants thrived and so did the birds that depend on them for food.
I visited the park three times and on each visit, I saw bananaquits. The birds were everywhere and I even started to recognize their songs. They actually began to remind me of chickadees: small, zippy, willing to come close, but never standing still. Time and time again, I took photos of individual birds that were once again in unfortunate positions. Either they were in the shade, where low light left out some details or they were in motion, which resulted in just enough blur to make the photos unusable.
I was beginning to worry that these gorgeous little birds would stump me again, but on my third and final visit, I finally got lucky. I was walking along the main road of the park and I could hear bananaquits all around me. At one spot, opposite the entrance to the “Color Garden,” there was a rough stone wall made of big chunks of coral rock and there were some overhanging trees. At the base of the stone wall, there was a collection of plants that had leaves that resembled yucca plants. All of the plants were in bloom, with large spikes of pale white flowers — each of which was “painted” with a hint of yellow. To my utter delight, there was a lone bananaquit that was feeding from those flowers at a moment when no other park visitors were nearby. This was the moment that I had been waiting for.
The bird was so preoccupied with the flowers that it didn’t seem to really show much concern about my presence. The birds in the park had clearly learned that people weren’t a serious threat to them, so they just went about their business in a state of pure comfort. The bird was still quick and fidgety, but there were so many flowers to feed from and the process of pausing at each blossom to take a sip of nectar meant that the movement was localized. I could focus on the bird, even move around for the best angle, and not worry that I would scare it away.
I decided to share this particular photo because it provided a perfect profile view of the bird. You can see the curve of the beak, the shape of the flowers, and all of the bird’s details really pop. The other thing that I love about this photo is the colors. The bananaquit has a white throat, a yellow breast and feathers that slowly fade back to white as you move down the belly. You can almost imagine that the yellow pollen from the flowers has stained the breast feathers yellow, which really ties things together in a very attractive way. This is a photo that took 22 years of waiting and hours and hours to finally capture, but they were glorious hours spent in a magical place. Worth it!
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 28 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, the Nature Conservancy and the Massachusetts State Parks and he currently teaches high school biology and physics. For more information visit www.speakingofnature.com, Speaking of Nature on Facebook, or the Speaking of Nature Podcast.