Berylline Hummingbird

Fascinating facts about the Berylline Hummingbird

• At just 8 to 10 cm long, the berylline hummingbird fits on a fingertip, yet a male weighs only about 4.4 g, roughly the weight of a single paperclip. Its tiny frame lets it hover like a living feather, sipping nectar from flowers the size of a coin. This extreme lightness fuels its rapid wingbeats, allowing it to dominate feeding spots and defend territories against larger hummingbirds, a key advantage in the crowded arid landscapes it calls home.
• While most of its range stays put, the berylline hummingbird becomes a seasonal traveler in the far north, flying south for winter. It has even been recorded breeding in southeastern Arizona and turning up in southwestern New Mexico and western Texas.
• A berylline hummingbird's diet is a buffet of nectar from both native and introduced plants, plus insects caught on the wing or plucked from spider webs. By feeding at all forest levels and defending its feeding territories, it outcompetes many other hummingbirds. This generalist feeding strategy lets it thrive across diverse habitats, from pine-oak forests to city gardens, bolstering its stable population of about two million mature individuals.
• In Oaxaca, the berylline hummingbird builds a cup-shaped nest of grass, plant fibers and spiderweb, lining the outside with lichens, and hangs it up to 15 m (50 ft) high on a horizontal branch. The female lays two eggs and, after about 20 days, the chicks fledge.
• Illegal logging in Mexico's Cumbres del Ajusco National Park threatens the berylline hummingbird's forest home. The park, a 920-hectare (2,275-acre) protected area, supplies 70 % of the region's drinking water and serves as a carbon sink. When loggers clear pine and fir trees, showing how human exploitation of a single forest can ripple into the survival of a species that otherwise enjoys a Least-Concern status.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia
• Mongabay

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