Long tailed hummingbird

Long-tailed Sylph, Aglaiocercus kingi: VE/ BO/ CO/ EC/ PE

Long-tailed Sylph, Aglaiocercus kingii. A Long-tailed Sylph spreads its wings in the rain. These hummingbirds are found in the east slope…

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long-tailed sylph

Booted racket-tail (LC)

A male marvelous spatuletail perches in a lek near Pomacoches in northern Peru. The species gets its name from the male's two longest tail feathers, which can be controlled independently and play a major role in the hummingbird's courtship displays. The spatuletail is considered by many to be the world's most spectacular hummingbird, but it is also one of the rarest. Confined to a small region in northern Peru, only 500-800 marvelous spatuletails are estimated to remain. I visited a…

A violet-tailed sylph hummingbird (Aglaiocercus coelestis) flies past an orange flower inspecting it to see if it will feed on it's pollen.

Broad-tailed Hummingbirds, though tiny, are medium-sized for a North American hummingbird. They have a slender body, a big head, and a long straight bill. Larger than a Calliope Hummingbird, slightly smaller than a Rufous Hummingbird. Males also perform aerial displays, flying high into the sky and rapidly diving towards the ground making a shrill metallic trill with their wings. These birds are frequent visitors to high elevation mountains so photographing them in New Mexico has become…