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Bee Hummingbird | Mellisuga helenae
Bijkolibrie | Zunzuncito
The Bee Hummingbird is the world's smallest bird: a male measures about 5.5 cm and weighs around 2 grams. It occurs only in Cuba, where it is local and patchily distributed. In flight it makes a buzzing sound and is often taken for a large insect. In Cuba it is called zunzuncito.
Voice
A high, jumbled twitter. Males sing from a bare twig, giving a rapid series of very high, squeaky notes; in flight a fine buzz of the wings can be heard.
Recording: Matt Slaymaker — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
5–6 cm, the female slightly larger than the male, with a short, straight black bill. The male is blue-green above and greyish-white below. In the breeding season the head and throat are iridescent fiery red to pink, with elongated feathers at the sides of the throat; outside the breeding season the crown is green and only the throat is red. The female is blue-green above and pale grey below, with white tips to the outer tail feathers and a small white spot behind the eye.
Confusion species
Cuban Emerald Riccordia ricordii is almost twice as long, with a forked, dark tail; the male is uniformly glossy green below and the female has green flanks. Ruby-throated Hummingbird Archilochus colubris, a scarce winter visitor to Cuba, is clearly larger and longer-billed; females and young birds are greener above and longer-tailed. A flying Bee Hummingbird most resembles a bumblebee or a small hawk-moth.
Habitat
Forest edges and clearings in dry and semi-evergreen forest, limestone forest on the mogotes, swamp forest and coastal vegetation, especially where lianas and epiphytes are abundant; also gardens with flowering plants near forest. It takes nectar from small flowers and catches small insects. The nest is a tiny cup of cobweb, bark and lichen a few metres above the ground.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Endemic to Cuba, where it is highly fragmented: in the west in the mogote areas of Pinar del Río, in the Zapata swamp, and in the east in places such as the Sierra Cristal and the Alexander von Humboldt area. It is also known from the Isla de la Juventud, where it is scarce. It does not occur outside Cuba.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The Zapata Peninsula is the best-known site, especially gardens with flowering shrubs in villages such as Palpite and Bermejas. A male often sits for long periods on the same bare twig and returns to it after each sally; this fixed lookout is the best clue.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. Its habitat is fragmented and is being lost to deforestation and the conversion of forest to farmland. The species is patchily distributed and scarce in many places.
Scientific name
Mellisuga helenae | (Lembeye, 1850)
Lembeye described the species in 1850 as Orthorhynchus helenae; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Mellisuga was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Mellisuga is Latin, from mel 'honey' and sugere 'to suck': 'honey-sucker', after its nectar feeding. helenae honours Helena (Elena) Booth (d. 1850), wife of the Cuban planter Carlos Booth, a friend of the naturalist Juan Gundlach. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cárdenas, Cuba.