The Red-tailed Comet 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...

 found in the central Andes

Andes

The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...

 of Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

 and Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

.

Description

The male has a spectacular, long, iridescent, golden-reddish tail and reaches 22 cm in length. The female has a shorter reddish-bronze tail and reaches 15 cm in length. It has a hoarse chattery call.

Habitat

Common to frequent in the woodlands and scrub typical of the dry Interandean valles

Interandean Valles

Dry valleys in the central Andes of Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina, known as "valles", are marked by a rain shadow effect of the surrounding mountains, and thus rainfall is limited, and mostly falls in a brief rainy season...

 extended up into Polylepis

Polylepis

Polylepis is a genus containing about twenty species of shrubs or trees native to the mid- and high-elevation regions of the tropical Andes. This group is unique in the rose family in that it is predominantly wind-pollinated. They are usually gnarled in shape, but in certain areas some trees are...

 forests, and into the shrubby transition zones to high elevation puna or the moister cloud forests. Frequently around human habitation in agricultural areas, cities and towns.

Local names

In at least part of its range it is known in the local Quechua

Quechua languages

Quechua is a Native South American language family and dialect cluster spoken primarily in the Andes of South America, derived from an original common ancestor language, Proto-Quechua. It is the most widely spoken language family of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a total of probably...

 language as "Q'ori Kenti" ("golden hummingbird"). It is called the "picaflor cometa" in Spanish. The genus name refers to Sappho

Sappho

Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

, an ancient Greek poet of Lesbos.

External links

• Red-tailed Comet photos; Article w/RangeMaps InfoNatura NatureServe