Chasing James Bond’s Hummingbird - Issue 26 : Color
▻http://nautil.us/issue/26/color/chasing-james-bonds-hummingbird
I go to the country to watchthe zunzuncito climbingthrough the air, and airthe misfortunes of yesterday;so much flying and returningthrough the delirious green,free, trembling for a moment,on the tip of a reed.—Blas de Otero “El Zunzuncito” (1966)Translated from the original Spanish by Pedro Gutiérrez Revuelta To find the Cuban bee hummingbird—the smallest avian species in existence, the one whose iridescent plumage, in Key lime green, lipstick red, and sapphire blue, matches the palettes of the classic cars along Havana’s Malecón—it’s best to track down famed bird guide El Chino Zapata. So in late May, I arranged for a fixer named Domingo to drop a peso-stuffed envelope at a Havana hotel (my credit and debit cards didn’t work on the island) and set off from Havana to the Bay of Pigs, where (...)