Date of Visit – 11 January 2025

Journal Entry – 30 July 2026

– Atish

Hummingbirds. Not something you can find in India or anywhere close. Now we were in a country with one hundered and twenty four species! It was like when birders come to India and and would want to see a Black Kite or Common Myna. We wanted to just see them hover and confirm with our own eyes, how small are they really are.

Through the two hours we spent there we saw the Giant Hummingbird who flaps at a frequency of ten to fiteen wing beats a second. I know it may seem like a lot but it only gets faster from here. We sat in an open hide behind a few railings and I was using my mom’s old phone to capture slow motions of them in flight while my father was shooting with a shutter speed of two thousand.

We saw many species fron the beatiful Green Tailed Trainbearer and Shining Sunbeam to the small Green and White Hummingbird. The experience was amazing and I was so happy that what I saw on National Geographic and other documentaries was now right infront of me. The were even closer to me than the TV itself.

I felt like I was invading their privacy when I was filming in slow motion. The experience was amazing and I highly recommend this to anyone visiting Peru.

– sikandar

We took a bus from our hotel in Cusco for one hour with our guide, who is a very good birder. On our way, we were talking about how he and his wife want to see the Seven Wonders of the World, and this time they are coming to see the Taj Mahal in India and then the pyramids in Cairo.

Then we had to stop our conversation and get off at someone’s house, which was actually a sanctuary filled with flowers, greenery, and feeders hung everywhere. But the most important thing was the hummingbirds they were everywhere, flying or hovering.

Then we finally came to a wooden deck with feeders in front of it and a dozen hummingbirds, so we started taking pictures. But they were so fast that we had to change the shutter speed on our father’s camera. They flap their wings from 10 to 80 times per second!

Then our guide was telling us about all the hummingbirds. He said that the most common was the Sparkling Violetear, and it was very aggressive. But seeing birds like this for us was very different because they were not in the wild, and the sugar feeders attract them. At that point, we were only taking pictures and filming through binoculars and our mother’s camera, since we did not have our own camera then. [1, 2]

The feeders were giving sugar water, and bees were everywhere on the feeders. Then suddenly, a huge brown hummingbird came, and our guide said it was the Giant Hummingbird. It rotates its wings at half the speed of a normal hummingbird. This was the first time we had ever seen hummingbirds in our life!

Then there was this long green hummingbird with two tails—that was actually one tail but diverted into two. But I do not know the name. Right after that, we saw a Sparkling Violetear fighting with a Green Violetear.

Then our guide said we had to go, so we followed him—not to the car, but upwards. He said we were going to a point to see more birds, so we were very excited. But before that, I looked into the sky and saw a Mountain Caracara. After that spotting, we followed him, and then a dog started to follow us, and we kept petting him.

But then suddenly our guide stopped and said the road was blocked, so we went back down into the sanctuary. We saw more Sparkling Violetears fighting over the feeder, and then a really small hummingbird came. Everyone said it is very rare, and it is called the White-bellied Hummingbird.

And that was the end of seeing hummingbirds. I loved the experience and would most certainly go back.

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Hummingbirds Sighted

• Giant Hummingbird
• Green Hermit
• Sparkling Violetear
• Green Violetear
• Green and White Hummingbird
• White Bellied Hummingbird
• Shining Sunbeam
• Andean Hillstar
• Green Tailed Trainbearer
• White Bellied Woodstar

Images