White-throated Mountain-gem

How to find it

Start in the Savegre and San Gerardo de Dota valley, where it is regularly seen and where records are the most numerous. It should turn up at most forested sites on Cerro de la Muerte above 1,800 m, and La Georgina and Chirripo are also named places. Birders at Savegre found it both at the feeders and in the landscaped grounds, and it seemed more inclined to visit flowers than feeders, so watch flowering plants as well. Check forest edges and openings, where it drops to shrub level.

How to recognise it

Males are bronzy green with a bright green crown, a white throat and a short, slightly curved black bill. The whole bird is about 10.5 cm long.

In Costa Rica the throat is usually white with a few purple or blue feathers around the edge. The breast is bright pale green, and the tail is ash gray, darker at the tip. The Costa Rican race has an all gray tail in males, while the Panamanian form has a dark green tail with a blue-black band near the tip.

Females lack the bright crown and throat and are cinnamon below. Both sexes have a white stripe behind the eye, a mark that helps separate them from other highland hummingbirds.

What it sounds like

Recording: Dan MacNeal, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

In Costa Rica it mostly stays in the canopy, but it drops to shrub level at forest openings and edges and also enters nearby second growth.

It drinks nectar from many flowers, including heath-family epiphytes, and catches small insects for protein. Males defend flowering shrubs in their territory and dominate most other hummingbirds, yet the species gives way to larger ones such as the Fiery-throated Hummingbird.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica this is a bird of the oak forests of the Talamanca mountains in the south. It climbs from about 1,850 m up to the treeline and is most abundant around 2,400 m. After breeding, birds move downslope to roughly 1,500 m.

Across its whole range it lives in humid mountain forest and second growth, usually above 1,500 m and perhaps seasonally down to 1,000 m. It sometimes visits gardens, shrubby clearings and plantations next to forest.

When to see it

It is a year-round resident. Nesting in Costa Rica runs from October to April, in a compact cup of plant fibers and tree-fern scales, decorated with moss and lichen, placed 1 to 3 m up in an understory shrub.

Similar birds

It resembles the Purple-throated Mountain-gem, but its throat is white, usually with a few purple or blue feathers around the edge. The two overlap at several sites in both Costa Rica and Panama and have been reported to interbreed. The female looks almost identical to the female Purple-throated, so the male's throat is the easier way to tell them apart.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Other Spanish names in use are colibrí ventricastaño, gema de garganta blanca, colibrí montañés coligrís and colibrí variable. One Costa Rican page also lists colibrí, gorrión and colibrí garganta blanca. Batsú is the Bri-Bri word for small bird, used especially for hummingbirds, and the Bri-Bri live in the Talamanca range where this mountain-gem lives.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list marks it as a resident endemic (R-END), and BirdLife International rates it Least Concern.

Photography tips

At feeders, birders and photographers have watched from only a few feet away, and the species was common there, though less abundant than the other hummingbirds. Flowering shrubs in the grounds are worth a try too, since it seemed to favor flowers over feeders.