Jon Dunn. The Glitter in the Green. Basic, 2021.
The Glitter in the Green is subtitled In Search of Hummingbirds. Author Dunn describes a long trip from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego focused on hummingbirds. Like many other people, Englishman Dunn became fascinated with these tiny and usually sparkling birds.
He tells us at the beginning that he is looking for some extremes. Though hummingbirds are high-energy nectar eaters, some live on the ecological edge of survival. He wanted to see the northernmost hummer, the Rufous Hummingbird at the northern edge of its range in Alaska. He would finish by finding a hummingbird that is sometimes seen in the snows of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America.
In between, he would go to famous hummingbird spots in Arizona, Costa Rica, Peru, and Brazil. He visits Cuba, even though he mentions only two hummingbirds native there, because its Bee Hummingbird is the world’s smallest bird at a little over two inches long. In the Andes he sees a Giant Hummingbird, the world’s largest, at nearly seven inches long. Unlike smaller hummers, he can actually see the bird’s wings as it flies and hovers.
There are over three hundred species of hummingbirds, all in the New World. Dunn tells us that he is not trying to see all of them—he confesses to not keeping lists. Still he shares with us a representative sample of the birds and the impressions they make.
Specific types are not always easy to find. In many cases the rain forest or montane environment makes any kind of travel difficult. He spent one night in Bolivia but had to leave because of riots. Some of the hummers he just wanted to see because they were distinctive in other ways.
The spatuletails are tiny birds with two almost invisible tail shafts that end with a “spatula.” Another type is the puffleg with what look like tiny pom-poms over its feet. There are sickelbills and the swordbills. Many of the names are imaginative, coming from jewelry or fantasy tales. Birds called emeralds or amethysts are types of hummingbirds.
Dunn makes us aware of the problems some of the hummingbirds have with survival. In Mexico and Peru hummingbird parts are sold as love potions and medicines not unlike rhino horn or tiger bones. Deforestation in some places has eliminated many plants that hummingbirds rely on for food. However, some places are learning that they can add as much or more to the economy through eco-tourism and promoting hummingbird conservation.
Dunn tells us that he has lived much of his adult life on a remote Shetland Island. His writing really resonates when he visits Juan Fernandez Island 400 miles off the coast of Chile, now known as Isla de Robinson Crusoe. It was here that Alexander Selkirk was marooned for over four years to survive and return to England. His experience inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe.
Throughout the book Dunn makes cultural and sometimes political tie-ins with his research. So we learn a little bit about Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. (I would add to his observations on Woolf that her The Voyage Out was inspired by a trip she took to Latin America where she no doubt encountered hummingbirds). Dunn seems to have liked Fidel Castro but is not sure what to make of Evo Morales. In Argentina he is warned not to let people know he is English: The Falklands War is still a sore spot there.
On the Isla de Robinson Crusoe there is now a small human settlement and a species of hummingbird that is found nowhere else. Now, many hummingbirds are sexually dimorphic, the males being more colorful or visually outstanding than plainer females. We understand this is because the females raise the young and need to be inconspicuous.
The Juan Fernandez Firecrown is sexually dimorphic, but the females are just as flamboyant looking as the males, though very different. On this remote island, there were no natural predators, so camouflage was not an issue. Alas, even when Selkirk was there in 1704, mankind had already brought rats to the island which are predators to the hummingbirds. Although there are some significant conservation measures taken on the island nowadays, Dunn is not optimistic about the Firecrown’s chances of survival.
Dunn tells us one of the challenges he has is trying to take photographs of these small, quick flyers, many of which prefer the shadows. At times he admits he was unable to photograph the birds he describes but just had to enjoy the moment. Still, The Glitter in the Green has over thirty photographs of the birds—including the hummingbird form in one of the famous Nazca geoglyphs of Peru. He was flying over it in an airplane at the time.
We also get a lot of the history of ornithologists and hummingbirds. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries scientists started seriously collecting specimens of all kinds of flora and fauna from all over the world. This included thousands of hummingbird skins that ended up in personal or museum collections.
Before that, besides traditional medicines, the uniquely glittering hummingbird feathers were used in art forms in Central America. Some survived the conquistadores and contributed to European artwork. Dunn describes an altarpiece from the sixteenth century at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London that even five centuries later still shimmers from the hummingbird feathers in its paints.
Dunn describes the multiple warnings he got from people about bears while he was in Alaska. There were definitely some challenges from weather and terrain. Still Dunn, like the hummingbird, reminded this reader of Robinson Crusoe in one other way. After Crusoe is rescued, he returns to England via Portugal and Spain. He crosses the Pyrenees where he warned about the wolves. Wolves do create a problem for him, but he confesses he is more concerned about the “two-legged” wolves he might encounter. For Dunn and his hummingbirds, those two-legged beasts can still be a problem today!