22-3-2017 TROGON LODGE, COSTA RICA - VOLCANO HUMMINGBIRD (Selasphorus flammula)

The volcano hummingbird (Selasphorus flammula ) is a very small hummingbird, native to the Talamancan montane forests of Costa Rica and western Panama.

This tiny endemic bird inhabits open brushy areas, paramo, and edges of elfin forest at altitudes from 1850 m to the highest peaks. It is only 7.5 cm long. The male weighs 2.5 g and the female 2.8 g. The black bill is short and straight.

The adult male volcano hummingbird has bronze-green upperparts and rufous-edged black outer tail feathers. The throat is grey-purple in the Talamanca range, red in the Poas-Barva mountains and pink-purple in the Irazú-Turrialba area, the rest of the underparts being white. The female is similar, but her throat is white with dusky spots. Young birds resemble the female but have buff fringes to the upperpart plumage.

The female volcano hummingbird is entirely responsible for nest building and incubation. She lays two white eggs in her tiny plant-down cup nest 1–5 m high in a scrub or on a root below a south or east facing bank. Incubation takes 15–19 days, and fledging another 20–26.

The food of this species is nectar, taken from a variety of small flowers, including Salvia and Fuchsia, and species normally pollinated by insects. Like other hummingbirds it also takes some small insects as an essential source of protein. In the breeding season male volcano hummingbirds perch conspicuously in open areas with flowers and defend their feeding territories aggressively with diving displays. The call of this rather quiet species is a whistled teeeeuu.

This species is replaced at somewhat lower elevations by its relative, the scintillant hummingbird, Selasphorus scintilla.

The Volcano Hummingbird is restricted to the Highlands Endemism Area of ​​Costa Rica and Panama, where it is common in upland grasslands and open scrubby pastures, usually above 2000 m elevation. This tiny hummingbird is mainly green above, with a bright wine-coloured gorget in the male (replaced by dark spots in the female), a white band on the breast, and greenish (males) or pale rufous (females) elsewhere on the underparts. The tail is slightly forked in both sexes, most noticeably in males. Three subspecies have been named, differing mainly in the colour of the gorget, from purplish-grey to bright green in the southernmost form. In the non-breeding season both sexes may defend territories around certain patches of small flowers.