Thursday, December 5, 2013

The Wine-Throat Hummingbird

The Wine-Throat Hummingbird
These hummer's I have always found to be fascinating and quite

beautiful.
I haven't found any quite like them in the hummingbird family.
The Male Wine-Throat hummingbird have extravagant magenta gorget but the throats of the female hummer's of these wines-throats are quite plain. These tiny hummer's inhabit humid and semi-humid forest, pine-oak woodlands and also shrubby type areas too. The wine-throat hummingbirds primarily feed on the nectar of their floral territories and are able to easily steal floral nectar from other neighorhooding hummingbirds that are within the area, because of they resemble of a bee in size and their flight patterns too.

These hummer's come from the highlands in Southern Mexico in

Chiapas South through Guatemala to northern El Salvador and Honduras. The elevation of these tiny bee like hummer's range is 1500 to 3500.
Habitat of these tiny bee hummer's is the Humid Evergreen forests, forest edge and shrubby growth that sits adjacent to these forest. They also can be found in high elevation of blooming flowers.

Food of these gems - They generally visit large groups of flower plans in all strata, although these hummer's perhaps are more frequent at the lower elevations. There is little info on the type of flowing plantings and blooms flowers that these wine-throats love to be their source of food. Yet there are a few known in El

Salvador that the Wine-throat hummingbirds seemed to forage on the flowers of a plant locally called Sacatinta [Fuchsia parviflora] which blooms profusely in September throughout the remaining of the year-

These flowers inhabit a wide area of open fields to brushy second growth and even woodland edges too. Sometimes these Fuchsia parviflora's have been seen clambering up through the crowns of tall trees toward the sunlight.
Another flowering bloom that these tiny bees like hummer's like that produce an abundance's of nectar while blooming in the months of October thru December is the Estoraque - [Styrax Argentus] which grows to the heights of these small trees, its flowers attract a wide variety of insects and of course the Wine-throat hummingbirds.

On one occasion a male wine-throat hummer was observed feeding on these flowers on a lower branch of a chicharra about 3 to 4 meters from the ground. Seems very odd for such a tiny gem of a tiny bird to be so closed to the ground when I first research this hummer but I then learned that they can move very fast like a bee so they would be perfectly fine, as nature is.
Breeding- These beautiful hummingbirds sing at dispersed links

with individual males separated by 25 to 30 meters. They are perch on a bare exposed twig in a bush or the lower branch of a tree, when they sing to the female wine-throat hummer's. It is a separated song that these male wine-throat hummer's will do for their females.

They will also spread their feathers of the red gorget 'all times' for

his ladies, while he makes a long looping flight around the ladies then returning again to the perch from which he will continue to sing again for the female wine-throat's - then will do the whole act again.
These tiny hummer's nests in mid Aug in Guatemala contain two very tiny white eggs in a slender oak trees about 1.2 meters above the ground/ near the end of the a branch.

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I have.. I do love my hummingbirds. As I do believe that hummingbirds have a huge connections with the Fae world.. So if you see hummingbirds you are sure to be that there is fairies in your garden too! you just may not see them at first...
For my love of the hummingbirds

Love and blessing to you all my dearest Reader