Snowcap

How to recognise it

About 7 cm. At that size, noticing it at all is half the work.

The adult male is dark wine-purple with a coppery gloss, and a white forehead and crown. That white cap settles it, and only the male wears it.

The female looks like another bird: metallic green on the back, bronze just above the tail, pale greyish white below, and no cap.

Listen for a soft, high, dry tsip. The song is a soft, sputtering warble. Males sing it from perches at a lek, a display ground where up to six males gather loosely to court the females, chasing each other off between songs.

Where it lives

The Caribbean slope of Central America, from southern Honduras through Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and here locally on the Pacific slope as well. In Costa Rica it breeds mostly between 300 and 800 metres, locally as high as 1,000. It is more often found at openings in the forest and in more open, planted country than deep inside it.

When to see it

All year at Rancho Naturalista, where the pools and the feeders work in every month. In Costa Rica it breeds between January and May, and after breeding most birds move down to lower ground, so knowing where they are this month is part of the guide's job.