Return of Bird of the Week: Velvet-purple Coronet

From the back, the male Velvet Purple Coronet is interesting. (These photos are from 2009, when WC was shooting with an Olympus E-3, a camera that was purely incapable of achieving sharp focus. Maddening. So the images aren’t as crisp as WC might like.) But from the front, the male Velvet-purple Coronet is spectacular. In addition to their sometimes spectacular colors, some hummingbirds have wonderful names. Like “Coronet.” The species has a limited range, in the cloud forests on the Pacific slopes of the Andes in Columbia and Ecuador, in a narrow band in the middle altitudes. Though unique enough…