Guatemala: Highland Hummingbirds

Southeastern Arizona spoils me in many ways. A good July day here can produce 13 or 14 species of hummingbird, not quite up to Ecuadorean standards but not that much worse, either.

The most active feeders in Guatemala seem to produce only 8 or 10 species at a time. But what species! Uncommon Arizona “specialties” like Magnificent, White-eared, and Berylline Hummingbirds occur in swarms at highland sites such as El Pilar, Los Andes, and Cabanas Suizas; and they’re joined by truly exotic wonders such as Azure-crowned and Blue-tailed Hummingbirds and the two big ones, Violet and Rufous Sabrewing.

Among the commonest highland species, Azure-crowned Hummingbird is also one of the snazziest. Just when you decide that it’s a drab little creature, one manages to catch the light just right–putting to shame the garish spangles of this White-eared!

I have to admit that I tended to ignore the Magnificent Hummingbirds, looking past them for the less familiar; but who can look away from a male in good light? (The female Magnificent at left is no slacker, either, even with White-eared and Berylline to compete with.)

Here in Arizona, Magnificent is the second-largest trochilid, coming only after Blue-throated. But in Guatemala, it’s the sabrewings that dwarf everything else. Violet Sabrewing is relatively uncommon, and incredibly flighty, rarely lingering long at the feeders, which it probes with its scimitar-like bill before darting off, big white tail tips aflash. Rufous Sabrewing, however, is very common, very conspicuous, and relatively confiding.

They aren’t so trusting, though, as to turn their back on the observer; but all that means is that there are plenty of opportunities to admire the beautiful pattern of the outer tail feathers.

North of the Mexican border, most hummingbirds have fairly undistinguished tails, at best marked with white spots. Rufous Sabrewing, however, has a complex pattern of bright buffy tips with a dusky subterminal band–much more attractive than the picture reveals.

Of all the hummingbirds we saw, I learned most from the Beryllines and the Blue-taileds. Berylline is an abundant hummingbird in the highlands, but I was having a hard time reconciling my impressions of the bird from west Mexico and Arizona with what I was seeing in Guatemala: the southern birds seemed so much more glittery, with much more colorful bellies and, often, less obvious brown in the wing; they were also more conspicuously booted, more than once making me think I must be on a Blue-tail. If I’d just reviewed Howell and Webb a little more thoroughly, I might have remembered that the Beryllines south of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec differ in just those ways from northern birds, and can reasonably be considered a distinct species, Deville’s Hummingbird.

That realization prepared me for the outstandingly good views we enjoyed of Blue-tailed Hummingbirds at Los Andes. I’d seen the species before, but never as well or as easily as there; this is a stunning (and apparently unphotographable) bird, even flashier than Berylline, with a deep steel-blue tail setting off its purplish rump. I could have spent all day watching them, but there was more to be seen….