Blue-tailed Hummingbird

How to find it

Look in northern Guanacaste and in the lowlands south of Lake Nicaragua. Concentrate on open places, young secondary growth and shade trees in coffee plantations, the habitats it favours here. Across its range flowering Inga trees are a good place to watch, since it is especially fond of them, though that tip is not specific to Costa Rica. Check every small hummingbird carefully, note the wing colour and undertail pattern, and listen as well as look. Treat any sighting as exceptional.

How to recognise it

This is a tiny hummingbird, about 9 cm long and about 4.5 g. These details describe the species across its range, not Costa Rica alone.

Look for:

- a bright green head

- a bronzy back

- a green belly

- a violet-blue tail, deep blue in some descriptions

- a black bill

- wings that look rufous in good light

Females are duller, with a greyish belly and less rufous in the wings.

The blue tail helps, but it is not enough alone. The wing and undertail details matter most when you compare it with its near twin.

Behaviour and diet

Birds in Costa Rica are solitary, so expect a single bird rather than a group at a flowering tree. Across its range it forages at all levels, from low to high. It feeds on nectar from many flowers and is especially fond of Inga flowers. It also catches insects in the air. That mix of nectar feeding and aerial hunting suits a hummingbird that works open edges and flowering trees.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it prefers open places, shade trees in coffee plantations and young secondary growth. The Costa Rican subspecies, impatiens, is listed for northwestern and central Costa Rica.

Elsewhere the species lives in southern Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. Across its range it lives from near sea level up to about 1,200 m in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, and up to 1,800 m in Mexico and Guatemala. Those are range-wide figures. Its wider habitats include open woodland, forest edges, second growth, scrub and clearings.

Similar birds

It looks almost the same as the Steely-vented (Blue-vented) Hummingbird, and the two can be nearly impossible to separate. The clues are rufous secondary wing feathers with dusky tips, a slightly more violet-blue tail and wider buff edges on the undertail coverts. The Blue-vented gives a high sharp tsip call, and its male song in Costa Rica is a buzzy bzz WEEP wup, so use voice together with wing colour.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans casually call many small emerald-type hummingbirds "gorrión", which is why the AOCR name carries Gurrión in brackets. The Costa Rican ornithological association keeps that word for the House Sparrow, which Costa Ricans call "electricista". Other names in use are colibrí, amazilia coliazul, amazilia de cola azul and colibrí cola azul. The name Colibrí Coliazul is also used for the Steely-vented Hummingbird in some sources, which can cause mix-ups.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list codes it R, but its real status in Costa Rica is unclear, with sources calling it rare or accidental and the National Museum calling it still scarce.