HUMMINGBIRDS OF CENTRAL AMERICA

Berylline  Hummingbird 

SCIENTIFIC NAME: Amazilia Beryllina

Males have a distinctive bright iridescent turquoise- green head, throat and chest that contrast against the darker cinnamon red wings and tail, and buff to whitish-gray lower abdomen.

The tail is dark with a purple-violet sheet with undertail feathers that show a rufous tinge.

Females are similar to males but are duller in plumage.

BILL: black, straight and slender and red-orange lower mandible.

SIZE: a medium-sized hummingbird measuring about 3 - 4.25 inches in length.

WEIGHT: weighs about 4 - 5 grams. males are slightly larger the females weighing about 4.87 grams compared to 4.37 grams of the females.

COLOR: turquoise-green, olive-green, cinnamon-red, red-orange, red, whitish-gray, buff, purple-violet, and rufous.

Pine oak and pine forests and tropical deciduous forests and canyon thickets. Very common in dry temperate forests and are often found near streams. Usually found at an elevation from 3000 to 10000 feet (~ 900 - 3000 meters).

NECTAR from a variety of brightly colored, scented small flowers of trees, herbs, shrubs, and epiphytes.

INSECTS  small spiders and insects.

NEST: cup-shaped nest out of plant fibers woven together and green moss on the outside for camouflage in a protected location in a shrub, bush or tree.

EGGS: 2 white eggs.

Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. In Mexico is in the mountains of western Mexico in the Sierra Madre Occidental, in the Neovolcanic Axis, in the Sierra Madre del Sur and in the mountains of Chiapas.

Hovering, sometimes hanging while feeding.

The Berylline Hummingbird is named after the sea-green gem beryl - as the dominant color of this bird closely resembles the color of this gem. (Berylline = like a beryl).

REFERENCES: https://www.beautyofbirds.com/

                         https://en.wikipedia.org/

                         https://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/