Mangrove Hummingbird
Chrysuronia boucardi
This restricted species is found only along the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, most often in or near mangrove trees. Medium-sized hummingbird. Male has a glittering blue-green head and throat contrasting with a whitish belly. The base of the bill is red. Female is greenish above with mostly white underparts; note her dark forked tail.
Identification
The mangrove hummingbird is 9.5 to 11 cm (3.7 to 4.3 in) long and weighs about 4.5 g (0.16 oz). Both sexes have a medium length bill, slightly decurved, with a black maxilla and a reddish mandible with a dusky tip. Adult males have golden to bronze-green upperparts and flanks. Their chin, throat, and breast are glittering bluish green with white bars near the end of the chin feathers. Their belly is whitish with bronze-green sides and their undertail coverts are white. The slightly forked tail is bronzy green; the outer feathers have blackish outer edges and tips. Adult females are similar to males, but with less green on the underparts and grayish tips on the outermost tail feathers. Immature birds resemble adult females but are more grayish below.<p>One form of vocalization has been described in words as a "soft djt sound that is rapid and given in a descending twitter."
Taxonomy
The mangrove hummingbird was formally described in 1877 by the French ornithologist Étienne Mulsant from a specimen collected by Adolphe Boucard near Puntarenas in Costa Rica. Mulsant placed the new species in the genus Arena and coined the binomial name Arena boucardi. The mangrove hummingbird is now placed in the genus Amazilia that was introduced in 1843 by the French naturalist René Lesson. The genus name comes from the Inca heroine in Jean-François Marmontel's novel Les Incas, ou la destruction de l'Empire du Pérou. The specific epithet was chosen to honour the collector Boucard. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
- Scientific name
- Chrysuronia boucardi
- Authority
- (Mulsant, 1877)
- Order
- Apodiformes
- Family
- Trochilidae
- Genus
- Chrysuronia
Range and habitat
The mangrove hummingbird is sedentary. It is found only on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. It inhabits large stands of tea mangrove Pelliciera rhizophorae and sometimes adjacent terrestrial second growth. Its distribution is not continuous.
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
The mangrove hummingbird forages for nectar, primarily at mangrove flowers. It has also been observed feeding at Inga, Heliconia, and Maripa in a terrestrial forest clearing near mangroves. In addition to nectar it feeds on insects.<p>The mangrove hummingbird's breeding season spans from October to February. It builds a cup nest of balsa (Ochroma pyramidale) floss and other soft plant fibers bound with spiderweb and with lichens on the outside. It is usually placed on a mangrove twig between 1 and 4 m (3 and 10 ft) above the water. The female incubates the clutch of two eggs, but the incubation period and time to fledging are not known.
Conservation
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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