HUMMINGBIRDS OF CENTRAL AMERICA

White-Eared Hummingbird

SCIENTIFIC NAME: Basilinna Leucotis

Males have a metallic green-blue throat, violet, and black crown and face, a deep green back with a rusty wash, a bronze-green slightly notched tail with darker outer feathers and white lower abdomen and undertail feathers.

Females are less colorful than the males, have a pale-cream throat with golden green to turquoise speckles, deep green back, and crown, a broad white line behind the eye with a broad blackish stripe below.

She has a buffy-white under plumage with green spots, and tail feathers that look like the male's, but with the lateral ones tipped with greyish-white.

BILL: males - red short, straight and very slender with a black tip, females - black with some red-orange at the base.

SIZE: A medium-sized hummingbird averages 3.5 - 3.9 inches in length.

WEIGHT: weighs approximately 3 - 4 grams.

COLOR: turquoise green-blue, violet, green, bronze-green, black, white, red, red-orange, greyish-white, and buff.

Occurs in pine, pine-oak, and pine-evergreen forests and adjacent edges and clearings with flowers.

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

INSECTS small insects and spiders.

Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas. Winters in mountains of Mexico.

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.

INCUBATION: 14 to 16 days, female only.