Tzeltal Mayan Hummingbird Remedy

While we went to Ocosingo and Tila to work with Chol Mayan speakers, we ran into quite a few local Tzeltal Mayan speakers as well, and spent some time collecting Tzeltal Mayan stories and bird names as well. One of my favorites was an old guy in Ocosingo who told us that drinking hummingbird blood is an effective remedy for warding off heart attacks!

Here we are spending an hour with one Tzeltal Mayan man in our hotel foyer in Tila. Not everyone has a great knowledge of birds--some folks only know maybe 20 common birds or so. In this case, we didn't get a lot of names, but everyone has some story or other that they've picked up along the way, so we always get something good from everyone!