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White-tailed Goldenthroat | Polytmus guainumbi
Witstaartgoudkeelkolibrie | Colibrí guainumbí
The White-tailed Goldenthroat is a medium-sized hummingbird of wet grassland and open savanna, found in the region only in Trinidad. It keeps low over the vegetation and forages alone, often at low flowering herbs and shrubs. It is local and often overlooked.
Voice
While foraging it gives a fast series of loud, excited spit calls; in flight a dry tsip-tsip. When perched it also utters high squeaky notes.
Recording: Fernando Igor de Godoy — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11.5 cm, with a long, clearly decurved bill whose lower mandible and part of the upper mandible are red. The male is bronze-green above with a coppery-brown crown and glittering golden-green below. A white stripe behind the eye and another below the cheek give the head a striped look. The tail is long, broad and rounded, green with white tips and broad white edges to the outer feathers. The female shares the head stripes and tail but is white to pale buff below with green spotting on throat and breast. Juveniles resemble the female.
Confusion species
The combination of a decurved, partly red bill, white head stripes and a green-and-white tail is unique in Trinidad. Blue-tailed Emerald Chlorostilbon mellisugus is smaller, with a short straight bill and a dark tail without white. Copper-rumped Hummingbird Saucerottia tobaci has a straight bill, a coppery rump and no white in the tail. Female Black-throated Mango Anthracothorax nigricollis is larger, with a black central stripe down white underparts and a reddish tail. Long-billed Starthroat Heliomaster longirostris has a longer, straight bill and a white patch on the back.
Habitat
Wet grassland, open savanna, pasture and the edges of freshwater marshes, preferably close to water; also rice fields and rough ground around marshes, in the lowlands. It takes nectar low down at herbs and shrubs and catches small insects in flight. In Trinidad it breeds from June to August.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Uncommon and local resident in Trinidad, mainly in the lowlands: Nariva Swamp, the Caroni rice fields, the Tacarigua area and open country in the south-west around Penal. Not known from Tobago. Outside the region from Colombia and Venezuela through the Guianas to Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and northern Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Most often seen along the edges of Nariva Swamp and at the Caroni rice fields, where it flies low over grass and along ditches. A bird perched on a low twig or stem shows its white head stripes well; in flight the white tail edges are the best clue.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Common across much of its range; in Trinidad uncommon and tied to wet open land, which is shrinking through drainage and development.
Scientific name
Polytmus guainumbi | (Pallas, 1764)
Pallas described the species in 1764 as Trochilus guainumbi; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Polytmus was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Polytmus comes from Greek polutimos 'very costly, valuable', from polus 'much' and timē 'worth'. guainumbi is a Tupí name for hummingbirds, recorded by Marcgrave (1648) and glossed as 'rays of the sun'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Suriname (originally given in error as 'Cape of Good Hope').