The Band-tailed Barbthroat (Threnetes ruckeri) is a medium-sized hummingbird

Hummingbird

Hummingbirds are birds that comprise the family Trochilidae. They are among the smallest of birds, most species measuring in the 7.5–13 cm range. Indeed, the smallest extant bird species is a hummingbird, the 5-cm Bee Hummingbird. They can hover in mid-air by rapidly flapping their wings...

 which is a resident breeder from southeastern Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

 and Belize

Belize

Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...

 to western Ecuador

Ecuador

Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

 and western Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

.

This hermit

Hermit (hummingbird)

The hermits are tropical and subtropical hummingbirds in the subfamily Phaethornithinae, comprising 30–40 species in six genera. They occur from southern Mexico, through Central America, to South America as far south as northern Argentina....

 species inhabits the understory of wet forest

Forest

A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...

s, woodland edges and old second growth. It occurs in the lowland

Lowland

In physical geography, a lowland is any broad expanse of land with a general low level. The term is thus applied to the landward portion of the upward slope from oceanic depths to continental highlands, to a region of depression in the interior of a mountainous region, to a plain of denudation, or...

s, typically up to an elevation of 800 m, although young birds may wander higher.

The nest is a cup of plant fibres attached 2–4 m high on the underside of a Heliconia

Heliconia

Heliconia, derived from the Greek word helikonios, is a genus of about 100 to 200 species of flowering plants native to the tropical Americas and the Pacific Ocean islands west to Indonesia. Many species of Heliconia are found in rainforests or tropical wet forests of these regions...

or sometimes a banana

Banana

Banana is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa and for the fruit they produce. Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, and red....

 leaf. The female alone incubates the two white eggs.

The Band-tailed Barbthroat is 10.2–11 cm long and weighs 5-5.8 g. it has a long decurved bill, and, as with other hermit hummingbirds, the sexes are similar. The adult has bronze-green upperparts, a dark ear patch and dusky malar stripe. The chest is rusty-orange and the underparts are otherwise grey. Young birds resemble the adult, but have buff feather tips.

The southern subspecies T. r. venezuelensis is somewhat duller on the breast than the nominate northern race.

The Band-tailed Barbthroat has a high thin tseep call, and the male’s song, given alone or at a lek, is a didiDIT dew dew in the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 lowlands

Caribbean Lowlands

The Caribbean Lowlands are a common region in Central American nations. It is the area usually on the Eastern side of a country, bordering the Caribbean Sea....

, but on the Pacific side the song is longer and includes trills and warbles.

Like other hermits, this Barbthroat visits widely separated flowers including: Heliconia, Costus

Costus

Costus is a genus of perennial tropical herbaceous plants from the costus family . They are often characterized and distinguished from relatives such as Zingiber by their spiraling stems. The genus as a whole is thus often called spiral gingers, but this can also refer to C...

spiral gingers, and bananas, and the male is less aggressively territorial than other male hummingbirds.

External links

• Band-tailed Barbthroat photo; Article w/RangeMaps Infonatura NatureServe