Rufous-crested Coquette

How to find it

Treat this bird as a vagrant, not a trip target, because a sighting in Costa Rica would be a major rarity. If you do look, watch flowering plants at forest edges, roadsides and shrubby clearings, where coquettes feed low. Look at every chunky, bumblebee-like flyer rather than only the typical hummingbirds. Remember that only adult males show the crest, so a young bird needs a very careful look.

How to recognise it

Start with size: this is a tiny hummingbird, about 7.5 to 8 cm long. These marks describe the species across its whole range, not only the rare birds that have reached Costa Rica.

The adult male is very dark green, with a white rump, a glossy green throat and long white feathers on the upper chest. His most striking mark is a long, spiky rufous crest.

The female lacks the crest. She has bronzy green underparts and a cinnamon throat.

Young males are harder. The 2016 Turrialba bird was an immature male, and only adult males show the rufous crest, so that bird needed very careful identification.

Behaviour and diet

Coquettes spend little time inside forest. They feed at low flowering plants in shrubby clearings, along roadsides and at forest edges. Their flight is somewhat beelike, and birds often choose high perches.

The species mainly drinks nectar from small, bright flowers of trees, herbs, shrubs and epiphytes. It also takes small insects and spiders.

Where it lives

Across its range the coquette lives in open shrubby places, near roads and settled areas, and at forest edges. A Spanish-language source gives its elevation range as roughly 600 to 2,000 m. Its regular range is the Pacific and Caribbean slopes of Panama, plus the Andes of Colombia.

In Costa Rica it is listed only for old records and a few recent visits. These came from the San José area, the Caribbean slope near Turrialba and the area around San Vito.

When to see it

The four old specimens were all captured in October, in different years between 1892 and 1906. The Turrialba bird was found on 30 October 2016, and a male stayed near San Vito for several weeks in September 2019.

Similar birds

Both sexes look very like the Spangled Coquette. The male's crest is spikier than the bushier crest of that species, and the female has a more cinnamon throat, where the female Spangled Coquette has a mostly white one. Costa Rica's own coquettes are the Black-crested and the White-crested. Neither is very common around Turrialba, though the Black-crested can be found at certain spots fairly regularly.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Coqueta Crestirrojiza is the name used in Costa Rica. Other Spanish names are coqueta crestirrufa (Panama, Ecuador), coqueta de cresta rufa (Peru), coqueta crestada (Colombia) and coqueta abanico rufo. An English alternative name is De Lattre's Coquette.

Status and conservation

The 2025-2026 AOCR official list marks it A, accidental and not resident, with the 2016 record accepted by the national rare bird records committee.

Photography tips

Coquettes fly like a slow, steady bumblebee or other chunky insect. This may let them slip into flower patches guarded by larger hummingbirds, so check chunky flying bugs at flowers.