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Wine-throated Hummingbird | Selasphorus ellioti
Elliots kolibrie | Zumbador guatemalteco
The Wine-throated Hummingbird is one of the smallest birds in Central America. It lives in the highlands of Chiapas, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, south of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The species is the southern counterpart of the Bumblebee Hummingbird, with which it was formerly placed in the genus Atthis.
Voice
The male sings a high, thin, dry trill, often from a bare twig. The call is a soft tsip. In flight the wings produce a low, insect-like hum.
Recording: Richard E. Webster — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
7–8 cm, with a short, straight black bill and a short, rounded tail. The male is green above and whitish below, with cinnamon flanks and a metallic wine-red to rose-purple throat with short projections at the sides. The female has a white throat finely spotted bronze-green and cinnamon flanks. In both sexes the tail is rufous at the base, with a black band and white tips to the outer feathers.
Confusion species
Bumblebee Hummingbird Selasphorus heloisa is almost identical but lives west and north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec; the male has a more rose-purple throat with longer projections. The female Sparkling-tailed Woodstar Tilmatura dupontii has a white patch on the side of the rump and a longer tail. Females of Broad-tailed Hummingbird Selasphorus platycercus and Rufous Hummingbird Selasphorus rufus are larger and longer-tailed.
Habitat
Pine-oak forest, cloud-forest edges, open woodland, scrub and mountain meadows with flowering herbs and shrubs, and gardens in mountain villages, mainly between about 1500 and 3000 m. Outside the breeding season also lower. It often forages low at small flowers along forest edges and in open country.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In the highlands of Chiapas in southern Mexico, Guatemala, north-western El Salvador and Honduras. The birds in Honduras belong to the subspecies selasphoroides.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the highlands of Guatemala, for example around the lakes and volcanoes of the western highlands, and in Chiapas around San Cristóbal de las Casas, at low flowering herbs and shrubs along forest edges and in mountain meadows.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species has a fairly small range, but is fairly common within it. Deforestation in the highlands is a local threat.
Scientific name
Selasphorus ellioti | (Ridgway, 1878)
Ridgway described the species in 1878 as Atthis ellioti; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Selasphorus was introduced in 1832 by Swainson. Selasphorus is Greek, from selas 'light, flame' and -phoros 'bearing': 'light-bearer', after the fiery, glittering throat. ellioti honours the American zoologist Daniel Giraud Elliot (1835–1915), an authority on hummingbirds and other bird groups. The specimen the first description was based on came from Volcán de Fuego, Guatemala.