Green-fronted Lancebill

How to find it

Skip the feeders and Porterweed gardens, because this bird ignores them. Watch forested cloud forest streams with small rapids or waterfalls instead. It probably holds linear territories along streams, so you usually need to wait. Early morning is easiest. Keep scanning rocks, twigs and flowers near a good stream spot, and check clumps of hanging red or pink tubular flowers, where it slips in underneath.

How to recognise it

Start with the bill: very long, black, straight, and tipping up slightly near the end.

Adults are mostly dusky iridescent green. Look for a glittering blue-green forehead, a dark bronzy crown and deep blue upper tail coverts. The tail is black tipped gray, and the feet are black.

Females look like males but are duller. They have a paler grayish to buff belly and may show a smaller or less intense green forehead patch.

A relaxed bird puffs up its forehead and chin, which gives the look of a straight bill coming out of a round head.

What it sounds like

Recording: Niels Krabbe, CC BY-SA 4.0, source, read 5 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

The lancebill hovers beneath long tubular flowers and probes upward. It tends to trap-line, which means it visits a regular circuit of favored plants. In Costa Rican cloud forest it often feeds at clumps of hanging red or pink tubular flowers, slipping underneath them.

It also perches on rocks in streams and flies out to catch insects near small waterfalls. The nest is often tucked under an overhang or root beside a stream or ledge, built of moss and tree fern scales bound with cobwebs.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it lives mostly in cloud forest, on both slopes, from the Monteverde area south to Panama, between about 800 and 2,300 m. It can show up in foothill forest. On the Pacific slopes of Costa Rica and Panama it may occur lower, at roughly 900 to 2,100 m.

The Costa Rican and western Panama form, veraguensis, lives on humid forested mountain slopes in the Talamanca mountains, in cloud forest and along stream corridors.

When to see it

Nesting in Costa Rica has been reported from August to January. Early morning, when it calls and is most active, is the easiest time to look.

Similar birds

The Blue-fronted Lancebill partly overlaps in range. The Green-fronted has a bright green forecrown instead of blue and prefers higher elevations. The Blue-fronted is smaller, with a shorter bill and a darker violet forehead. The Green-fronted male is also larger than a female Blue-fronted, and has a green frontlet and a coppery hind neck.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

In Costa Rica the bird is called Pico de Lanza Frentiverde. Other Spanish names elsewhere include colibrí picolanza mayor and pico de lanza mayor. The genus name Doryfera comes from Greek words meaning 'lance bearer'.

Status and conservation

It is a resident species on the AOCR list (R) and is listed as Least Concern.

Photography tips

Tour groups have had long scope views of perched birds at Tapantí. In one case the female sat on a slim branch across the road from the nest. At another nest a guide staked out a spot, and the female was only briefly visible perched nearby when she left to find food. Bring patience and a scope.