Photographing the Fiery Topaz: A Feathered Gemstone of the Amazon

The green shadows of the Amazon hide many treasures. From the gold and riches that played a role in the plundering of the world’s largest rainforest, to the ones I’m after — living treasures. One river, the Napo, plays a central role in both types. The Napo River is part of the story of the mythical city of El Dorado, and it also is home to one of the most beautiful hummingbirds of the Amazon: the Fiery Topaz (Topaza pyra).

The Napo is Ecuador’s largest tributary of the Amazon. Not far from here, around the confluence with the Coca River, a large party of Spanish conquistadors set up camp in 1541 to decide how to proceed in their quest for cinnamon and the rumored city of El Dorado. By that time, they had already endured several grueling months of travel from Quito across the Andes, and what had once been a sizable expeditionary force had been decimated by exhaustion and starvation.

Of the several thousand pigs, llamas, dogs and horses that had served as food supplies or transport animals, only a few pitiful creatures remained. They had begun eating saddles, belts, and even their own boots. In their desperation, the starving Spaniards staved off hunger with a mixture of horse blood and mud. It was in this grim state that the idea was born to forge the horseshoes of their dead animals into nails and build a boat that would carry them downstream.

A captured and tortured local Indian told his starving tormentors exactly what they wanted to hear — that there was a village with plenty of food a few days downstream. The expedition leaders split up. Gonzalo Pizarro, in charge of the expedition, stayed behind. His lieutenant, Francisco de Orellana boarded a brand-new brigantine named El Pedro along with about fifty men.

The quest for the mythical El Dorado turned into a search for something as mundane as food. But it took them about two weeks of drifting down the Río Napo before they found any. Returning back upstream with supplies was impossible. And so, they followed the river wherever it would take them. It grew stronger with every new tributary, until — after terrible hardships — it finally spat them out some 4,000 kilometers later into the waters of the Atlantic.

Out of the entire expedition that began in Quito with over 4,000 men, only a handful made it back home. They returned without a single pinch of the cinnamon they had been sent to find, and not a trace of the gold they so desperately craved. The details of the journey were recorded by an expedition member and its primary chronicler, Friar Gaspar de Carvajal. The full, fascinating account can be found in the book River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana’s Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon by Buddy Levy. It’s a truly gripping read.

Whether El Dorado ever truly existed remains a question. Since those days, however, vast quantities of gold and other precious stones have been discovered and extracted from the Amazon. Among them, in 1984, was a massive 37-kilogram topaz — now the largest cut gemstone in the world, weighing 6.2 kilograms after being shaped and polished. This yellowish-brown gemstone was given the symbolic name El Dorado.

At the end of May this year, my companions and I managed to photograph a topaz much smaller in size — only about twelve grams. But much more full of life and mystery. It is, perhaps, the most beautiful hummingbird of the Amazon: the Fiery Topaz (Topaza pyra).

Last year, I learned that somewhere near the Río Napo — roughly a hundred kilometers from where Orellana embarked on his epic voyage — the Fiery Topaz can be found. This jewel had teased me for many years as I flipped through bird atlases of the Neotropics.

Among dozens of often very similar hummingbird species, the male Fiery Topaz instantly grabs your eye with its blazing orange-red belly and chest, contrasted by an emerald-green rump and throat. On the color wheel, they lie almost exactly opposite. And splitting them is a velvety dark black that only makes the colors more vibrant.

The Fiery Topaz is one of the larger hummingbird species. At 12 grams (0.4 ounces), it is a thunderbird weighing more than six times as much as the smallest members of the family, such as the Gorgeted woodstar (Chaetocercus heliodor). Thanks to its two elongated tail feathers, it can measure over 20 cm / 8 inches in length. A hummingbird nearly a quarter of a meter in size? That’s quite a bird.

You might assume that such a conspicuously colored, flying giant would be an easy target for observation — and maybe even for photography. But in the tropics, most assumptions based on our temperate-zone experience tend to fall apart. Despite the relatively large territory this species occupies, the Topaz remains an elusive bird, and science still knows surprisingly little about it. It shuns sugar-water feeders and prefers the upper canopy of the rainforest. As a result, there are far fewer photographs of it than you might expect for such a spectacular-looking creature.

The place said to offer the best chance for viewing the Topaz lies near the confluence of the Napo River and its right-side tributary, the Río Arajuno. A small flock of several males and females is said to gather there just before sunset to hunt for insects near a forest pool. (Indeed, hummingbirds do not only survive on the sugar from a flower’s nectar; they also hunt insects to meet their protein needs.)

And so, our group embarks. It is sometime before three in the afternoon when I wave to the boatman who ferries us across the river in his motorized canoe. Like the myth of Charon, for a dollar a soul, he ferries us to the other side. But unlike in Greek mythology, for us, a Toyota Hilux is waiting on the other side to take us farther. We fill it to the brim with ourselves and our camera equipment. With the wind in our hair — or what’s left of our hair, at least — we speed down a road that saves us from hours of travel by river. Francisco de Orellana would be jealous.

After about fifteen minutes, we come to a stop at the river. The road goes no farther. In this part of the world, rivers have always been the main arteries of transportation. That was true long before Orellana’s time, and it still holds today. (This also helps keep the pace of deforestation at least somewhat in check here. Where heavy trucks can’t get, the sound of chainsaws is not as intense.)

The river here is not so strong — at least, nothing like it is hundreds of kilometers farther on. Here, it is only just gaining strength under the mountains and in some places forms shallow rapids. In a motorized canoe, you just occasionally have to lift the motor out of the water to keep the propeller from being chewed up by the rocks on the riverbed. It’s easy navigation during the day. And at night, during our return journey? Well, we will worry about that later.

Not far downstream, the color of the river suddenly changes. The murky, sediment-laden waters of the Napo meet the dark, tannin-rich waters of the Arajuno, stained by decaying vegetation. Our canoe shifts to a southwesterly course and begins making its way upstream along this relatively small jungle tributary. The banks close in on us, and the canopy overhead slowly starts to seal shut. Every now and then, a kingfisher flashes past, followed by an ani or a cormorant.

We don’t travel far up the Río Arajuno. Which is a shame. Watching the green walls of forest slip by, and letting your hand skim through the water splashing off the bow, is a simple and almost meditative pleasure. It’s also about the only way to conjure a breeze in the stifling Amazon heat. But soon enough, the bow bites into a sandy bank at a sharp bend in the river, where the current has deposited a crescent of fine silt. We jump ashore and follow a narrow path leading deeper into the forest.

It’s just before five in the afternoon. The sun, which only a moment ago stood above the horizon, now caresses the tops of the trees with its rays somewhere far away, where we can no longer see. We gather by a small forest pond. Some members of our group stand at the water’s edge; others sit on the edge of a low observation platform. Our eyes scan the branches around us, watching as darkness begins to creep into the jungle.

Nightfall here, just below the equator, is swift. It’s not the slow, lingering affair known to those living in the far north. Here, darkness arrives with clockwork precision at six o’clock sharp, as if someone up in the sky flicked a giant switch. Though truth be told, that’s more how it works out in the open highlands. Down here in the lowlands, much of the light is stolen by the thick tropical vegetation long before sunset. In the densest parts of the forest, day never really gets underway at all.

With my camera on a tripod, I watch the thickening gloom with growing unease. It’s around half past five in the evening, and the sounds of the forest are starting to change. The evening show is about to begin. Insects, frogs, and some birds switch over to their nocturnal repertoire.

As photographers, we perceive the change of day and night differently than a normal person. To capture something so poetic, ephemeral, and otherworldly beautiful, all it takes are three settings — ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. And those three settings, which I had dialed in so hopefully at first, are now signaling the day’s inevitable end.

And then, the hummingbirds first appear in the tree canopy above me, as striking as I had dreamed. My exposure settings have long since strayed from the ideal. On my 500mm lens, I have a 1.4x teleconverter attached to reach across to the far side of the pond. The aperture, which I had set at f/7.1 for more sharpness and depth of field, is now fully opened to f/5.6. The ISO, initially set at a comfortable 2500, has jumped to 8000. And the resulting shutter speed? What, one thirtieth of a second? Well, that’s going to be tough.

But for heaven’s sake — would one of you finally land where I need you, please! The light is vanishing before my eyes, and while my buddies up on the platform are happily firing away at hummingbirds darting through the canopy, my memory card is still heartbreakingly empty. One brave little hummer finally perches on a dry bamboo stalk in front of me, but it’s way too high, silhouetted against the pale sky.

And then, it finally happens.

First one, then another male lands on a low-hanging branch, right in front of me. My heart is pounding at the sight of such brilliance. Those colors, that elegant body shape, and the sheer size of them! Both males start to chirp excitedly and spread their wings. The branch beneath them bounces like a springboard. One thirtieth of a second… well, I wonder if at least one photo will be sharp. I hold the shutter down, shoot 15 frames per second while nudging the focus with my thumb.

Fortunately, birds have an amazing ability to compensate for the movement of the branch under their feet so that their body remains almost motionless. A quick check in the viewfinder display shows that at least some of the photos are usably sharp. Yeah, I’m not leaving empty-handed today! I can’t believe I actually saw this. It’s that feeling of someone who’s read about the pyramids since childhood and then, years later, actually stands in front of them. Those birds really exist!

The whole spectacle lasted maybe fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of complete timelessness, when the world around you ceases to exist and your focus narrows to just a few vibrantly colored birds, swaying and frolicking on a thin bamboo branch. And then — as if someone pulled a curtain — the show is over. Just as suddenly as the topazes appeared, they vanish into the darkening forest.

In the remaining light of the darkening sky, we return to the canoe at a goose’s pace and head downstream on the Arajuno to the confluence with the Napo. As the boat begins to head upstream, the engine whines. How, in the almost total darkness, the navigator finds his way between the shallows is not entirely clear to me.

Then, without warning, the engine cuts out. “I need a little push, amigos!”

My question from earlier begins to feel prescient, but now is not the time for self-reflection. “Amigo” Vladimir and I jump into the river, and together with the boatman, we shove the canoe over the stony riverbed against the current. Thousands of kilometers downstream, the Amazon runs hundreds of meters deep, but here beneath the Andes, we’re scraping the keel and the soles of our feet over smooth, water-polished stones.

When we tie up the canoe at the point where we set out about four hours earlier, the night is dark. Thousands of stars shine in the sky. This is not a common sight, even here in the middle of the wilderness, due to the cloud cover out here — especially now, during the rainy season. Tonight, the sky seems to be celebrating with us.

We jump off the camioneta into the dust of the road, and a few moments later, we’re once again ferrying across the dark waters of the Napo… or is it the River Styx? I’m no longer sure. We press our obolus into Charon’s palm and instead of going to the underworld, at least for now, we get dropped off at the at the riverside pub. “Seven beers, please.” Cheers, amigos.