A unique series of portraits of resplendent quetzals and other Guatemalan birds presented by a very talented local wildlife photographer.

Of dancing egrets & feathered serpents

By Peter Rockstroh

The pink-headed warbler (*Ergaticus versicolor*) is a highland avian specialty of Guatemala and southeastern México. It is non-migratory and associated with cool evergreen forests, especially the dwindling populations of the Guatemalan fir tree (*Abies guatemalensis*). Image: ©Gabriel Rodríguez Coloma 2022.

When I look at the work of other photographers, I particularly like to examine those images that surprise me at first glance. Whether it is their subject matter, the circumstances they were taken under, or the way light was employed, I am seduced by images that evoke a mixture of awe, mystery, and envy. This is photography shorthand for: "Amazing shot, how the hell did they do that? and, “I wish I’d been there to take one as well!".

Although I enjoy viewing high quality photos across a wide variety of different themes, I continually drift back to my love of nature photography. This is because it is the one genre that I identify with the most. It is also because I always learn something new from every single natural history-related image that astonishes me, especially once I understand the challenges involved in their production and how these were countered by the photographer.

Wildlife photographers in particular are an interesting breed. Many have an academic background in hard sciences, others grew up in rural areas with wild areas nearby, or were typical kids prior to the cell phone era that ran around with mud on their faces and weird creatures in jars, scaring people with big beetles or lizards in their pockets. Once they grew up, most of them stopped pestering their sisters and teachers with bugs or lizards. Some even started wearing clothes designed for employed adults, yet somehow still always look the part.

Gabriel Rodríguez Coloma is none of the above.

City born and raised, he grew up with a healthy interest in nature and occasional daydreams of making documentaries but certainly no reptiles or frogs crawling out of his pockets. He had a normal quota of weekend trips to the beach or other standard outings to local parks during his school years. Although he was part of the show-dog circuit crowd for nearly 30 years–breeding and competing at all levels–a love for dogs and a collection of Best in Show trophies are all that remain from those years.

"So, why did you stop breeding dogs?", I asked.

"Because one day I picked up a camera and started taking photographs".

A developing love of nature snuck up on him and finally won him over through both his eyes and his camera’s viewfinder. And photography was to become his preferred expressive medium, whether he wanted it to be so or not.

He lost his father at a very young age, but one of his clear childhood memories is of his father teaching him how to use a Rolleiflex camera. Many years later, having recently earned his graduate degree in business administration, he was offered a job at Kodak in Guatemala. He worked there for a few years. It seemed quite reasonable to ask him if he had started photographing then.

"I never learned to like the smell of photochemicals", he said, with the expression of someone politely declining an extra serving of boiled brussel sprouts that grandma had specially prepared for a guest.

A few years later Gabriel finally did pick up a camera again. He didn’t know how it started or what triggered the initial interest in nature photography. But he did have one specific objective early on: To learn how to photograph hummingbirds in flight. What started as curiosity about hummers, later fueled by frustration when learning that often they are not easy subjects to work with, later metamorphosed into a full-blown obsession. He set up bird feeders at his house, took some basic photography courses and relentlessly continued to learn the tricks of wild bird photography during every spare moment until he finally achieved the results he wanted.

It seems that Gabriel’s early photo courses and the long hours spent by the hummingbird feeders paid off, as this image of a rufous sabrewing (*Campylopterus rufus*) can attest. ©Gabriel Rodríguez Coloma 2022.

So now what?

He had learned to work with light and exposure under difficult conditions and obtained the first images he had originally imagined. Lacking a hardcore birder’s fixation to tick species off a list, or a biologist’s impulse to highlight the characteristics that allow you to identify the species, he just continued photographing birds, returning to the same spots as often as necessary until he was satisfied with the results.

It was after our brief interview that I believe I understand his approach to the craft. Much like a studio photographer that designs an image in his mind, planning around light and shadows and colors, Gabriel envisions the final image and goes hunting for that particular scene in nature. Sometimes it is rendered in dramatic, intense colors (e.g., the ibis image above); on occasion in high contrast black & white (e.g., great egret image below) or in subtle pastel shades, but all his select images must meet a preconceived notion of what this animal should look like in his portraits.

Completely unconcerned about the naming debate centered on the tricolored heron (*Egretta* *tricolor*), he took this image as the bird was descending to feed on an exposed sand flat before returning to its nocturnal roost. ©Gabriel Rodríguez Coloma 2022.

"I spent two days in a five-foot canoe to photograph these heron and egret species", continuing, "And I had to do it in such a way so they would accept me as part of their landscape".

I don’t know if the nesting egrets considered his presence as a bit of habitat improvement, but his images show that they grew accustomed to his presence and rapidly returned to their breeding activities.

Great egret (*Ardea alba*) doing a bit of yoga stretching in preparation for a fan-dance. ©Gabriel Rodríguez Coloma 2022.

Gabriel admitted, "I’m a bit clumsy when it comes to computers, so there is not much post-production in my work. I try to get as much content as I can during the initial exposure. I needed to take this photo in the late afternoon, so I could underexpose the vegetation as much as possible, and still get luminous white plumage with all its detail".

After his umpteenth trip to the heronry, on the second day of his last visit he got lucky. The sky was dark and just as the male snowy egret shown below flared his breeding plumage; a moment of fleeting sunshine lit up his facial colors, shape and all his feathered finery.

Snowy egret (*Egretta thula*) displaying breeding plumage at the nest. See article for comments. ©Gabriel Rodríguez Coloma 2022.

At that point, Gabriel fell in love with this type of image - birds with their wings stretched out like beautiful, befeathered women dancing with silk fans; sometimes delicate, understated and elegant like geishas, other times brash and powerful like flamenco dancers.

He also admits to losing track of time in the pursuit of smaller songbirds.

"I have no patience for tiny warblers", he admitted. "They are just too fast and frustrating for me to photograph".

I know what he means. Whenever I feel cocky because I just took a good picture of a rare wild bird, I find myself trying to photograph a warbler in thick cover for a reality check.

His images of the yellow winged tanager, a nightingale-thrush and a pink-headed warbler look as if each one of these birds had commissioned a portrait for their personal vanity.

Many bird photographers like to be on the move while in the field, constantly scanning their surroundings, alert to movement, camera equipment ready at hand. In contrast, Gabriel already has the photo he seeks in his mind’s-eye, and he will patiently wait for the bird to arrive onstage and do its part to create that image.

Like any Guatemalan, many Central American ecotourists and almost all the world’s birders he is enamored of the national symbol, the resplendent quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno). One look at the bird and this is easy to understand. It is a fantastic animal on every level; venerated by Pre-Contact cultures in Mesoamerica, a near myth among European naturalists until it was described by ornithologists in the early nineteenth century. Quetzals are glittering green feathered serpents – the region’s quintessential rara avis. For the past seven or eight years, Gabriel has returned annually to photograph these birds several different cloud forest locations in the Guatemalan highlands.

But his images are not like the usual photos borrowed to illustrate some of the lines of the Guatemalan National anthem (Ojalá que levante su vuelo, más que el condor y el águila real …- “I hope that it lifts and flies high, even more than the condor and the royal eagle…”), i.e., shown silhouetted against a sunset, a male quetzal flies across the sky, tail coverts trailing, etc. and so on and so forth.

One of Gabriel’s favorites is shown below. It is an intimate study of many birdwatchers’ Holy Grail. A male resplendent quetzal shown clinging to a tree trunk beside a nest hole in full breeding plumage and a bold, almost self-assured look on its face. This image is almost startling in some ways yet subtle others. It is as close as you can get to being punched in the eye by exquisite feather color combinations and superb detail, together with an avian expression that seems to say, "Go ahead and stare, folks. But don’t you ever forget we met".

Male resplendent quetzal (*Pharomachrus m. mocinno*) at the nest. See article for comments. ©Gabriel Rodríguez Coloma 2022.

And thanks to Gabriel Rodríguez Coloma’s thousands of hours of fieldwork and amazing photography, we never will.

Right, a male quetzal drawn from a highly stylized image on a Mayan stone tablet in the Temple of the Cross at Palenque in Chiapas, México. The full depiction shows it perched at the top of a tall tree; there is a similar image in another temple at this Pre-Contact city. Both carvings likely date to sometime just before 700 A.D. Image from Tozzer & Allen (1910).

Should you still wonder why all the fuss about resplendent quetzals, Gabriel was kind enough to share the following unique video clip of a pair of these Central American cloud forest phantoms enjoying their morning showers.

It captures both the thrill and magic to be found in tropical bird-watching and also explains the pride the people of Guatemala have for their national bird.