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Blue-headed Hummingbird | Riccordia bicolor
Blauwkopkolibrie | Colibrí bicolor
The Blue-headed Hummingbird is confined to the montane forests of Dominica and Martinique. The male is the only hummingbird in the Lesser Antilles with an entirely blue head.
Voice
Metallic notes that drop rapidly in pitch, and a metallic click-click-click.
Recording: Elias Aristides Elias — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
9–11 cm, with a slightly decurved black bill. The male is glossy green to blue-green, with a bright violet-blue head and throat, whitish thighs and a blue-black, slightly forked tail. The female is bronzy green above, greyish-white below with a whitish throat, and has a graduated tail with white or grey tips to the outer feathers. Juveniles are duller, with a shorter, straight bill; young males have a pink lower mandible.
Confusion species
Purple-throated Carib Eulampis jugularis and Green-throated Carib Eulampis holosericeus are much larger, with longer, curved bills, and lack the blue head. Antillean Crested Hummingbird Orthorhyncus cristatus is smaller; the male has a pointed green crest and the female a shorter, straight bill. The female Blue-headed Hummingbird is told from that species by the graduated tail and the somewhat longer, curved bill.
Habitat
Undisturbed montane rainforest and cloud forest and secondary forest along rivers and in forest clearings, mainly between 500 and 1,200 m and most numerous between 800 and 1,000 m; sometimes lower. It takes nectar from flowers of shrubs and epiphytes in the forest understorey. It breeds from February to May; the nest is often placed in a tree fern.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Only on Dominica and Martinique. On Dominica it is widespread in the forested mountains of the interior; on Martinique it is scarcer and largely confined to the forested slopes of Montagne Pelée and the Pitons du Carbet in the north. It does not occur outside these two islands.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
On Dominica along forest trails in the interior, for example the Syndicate Nature Trail in Morne Diablotin National Park and the roads to Freshwater Lake and the Emerald Pool. On Martinique in the montane forest along the Route de la Trace. Best looked for at flowering shrubs on forest edges and along streams.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. The range is small and confined to two islands, and hurricanes can severely damage the forest in a short time; after Hurricane Maria in 2017 Dominica lost a large part of its tree cover. Climate change increases this risk.
Scientific name
Riccordia bicolor | (Gmelin, 1788)
Gmelin described the species in 1788 as Trochilus bicolor; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Riccordia was introduced in 1854 by Reichenbach. Riccordia honours the French surgeon and naturalist Alexandre Ricord (b. 1798), after whom the type species ricordii is also named. bicolor is Latin for 'two-coloured', after the male's blue head and green body. The specimen the first description was based on came from Guadeloupe.