Black-crested Coquette

How to find it

Check forest edges, clearings and hedgerows, especially where Stachytarpheta (porterweed) is in flower. It also works mass-flowering trees and small insect-pollinated flowers. It is not easy to see because of its behaviour and uncommon status, and at one lodge a guide located it by hearing it. It could easily escape notice if you do not find the right flowering trees. Porterweed at eye level gives a fair chance if you watch long enough. Birders know little about its movements, and it may be at one site for a while and gone the next week.

How to recognise it

The male is the showy one. Look for:

A green crown and throat with a wispy black crest.

A bronzy breast band.

Long black and buff cheek tufts.

A red bill with a black tip.

A white belly with bronze spots.

A white band across the rump, between the bronze-green back and the dark rump.

A cinnamon rufous tail.

Females have no crest and a plain crown. They have a black face, a narrow white rump band, and cinnamon outer tail feathers with a wide black band near the tip. Costa Rican sources describe the female with a blackish face mask and a buffy white throat with bronze spots. Young birds look like females. Only adult males have the showy crest, so females and young birds are harder to name.

Behaviour and diet

It is solitary and gives way to larger hummingbirds. It is not usually aggressive, but it sneaks in to steal nectar in other species' territories. It feeds by trap-lining, visiting a circuit of flowering trees, and hovers while feeding. The flight is slow and bee-like, with the tail cocked up to show the white rump band. Hovering, that band makes it look like a hawkmoth. Males puff out their feathers, raise the crest and pose with the bill open. Two males were filmed displaying while perched near each other, without chasing. It often lives high in the forest canopy, but sometimes drops to shrub level at edges and gaps.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it lives between 300 and 1,200 m on the Caribbean slope, from the Guanacaste range south to the Reventazón river basin. It uses semi-open edges of humid forest, forest gaps and brushy areas.

It sometimes wanders down to the Caribbean lowlands and has been seen breeding as low as 100 m. It is an occasional visitor on the Pacific side of the upper Central Valley, possibly a seasonal visitor there. Birds have also been noted moving up or down slope locally.

When to see it

One nest in Costa Rica was active in March, a small cup on a twig end about 8 m up at a forest edge. Local flowering seems to affect where the bird is, with birds moving up or down slope.

Similar birds

A tiny hummingbird with a white rump band is a thorntail or a coquette. Male Green Thorntail has a long tail, and the female has a white malar stripe and no rufous in the plumage. Without those but with the rump band, it is a coquette. White-crested Coquette has a white spike in the middle of the forehead instead of a dark crest, and lives in the southern Pacific lowlands and foothills.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Rican sources list the common names colibri, gorrion and coqueta crestinegra. The Spanish name Coqueta Crestinegra is also used in Nicaragua and Panama, while Mexico says coqueta cresta negra and Honduras says colibri cresta negra. The species name helenae honors Princess Helena d'Orléans (1814 to 1858), wife of a Duke who backed natural science.

Status and conservation

It is listed as R (rare resident) on the AOCR list, and is rated Least Concern globally with a decreasing population trend.

Photography tips

Canopy-feeding coquettes look like bugs from about 100 feet up, so porterweed at eye level is the best chance for a close look. One photographer shot a male at Braulio Carrillo in March 2013 with a 600mm lens and 1.4x converter. The bird perched and posed, which he said was unusual for a species he had found elusive.