What time is it?  Oh yeah, you know it...time to learn about a new animal, baby!  This time I'll be taking a suggestion from Foreverserenity and will explore the life of the...

Red-billed Streamertail Hummingbird (AKA Jamaican Streamertail, Green-and-black Streamertail, Doctor Bird, God Bird, Scissors-tail Hummingbird, Western Streamertail) Trochilus polytmus

From the family Trochilidae, which contains all hummingbird species.  There is one other streamertail that is closely related and lives opposite of the Red-billed streamertail's range, the Black-billed streamertail.  There is a zone of hybrids where their territories overlap.

Hummingbirds are full of pretty.  This bird will balance out all the ugly from that star-nosed mole in the last feature.

A handsome bird, indeed.

Physical Characteristics:

This species exhibits sexual dimorphism, so you get two sets of stats, baby.

Male- total length is around 8.7–11.8 in(~22–30cm) including the 0.9 in(~2.3cm) bill, and the 5.1–6.7in (~13–17cm) tail.  He weighs in at around 0.18oz(~5.2g).  They possess a straight coral red bill with a black tip. The head is covered in black, lateral crown feathers and ear-coverings are elongated beyond the nape.  The body is an iridescent emerald green which is darker on the back.  The tail is black and forked. The second outermost tail feathers are very long (looking like streamers). The streamers are scalloped and fluted on the inside and make a high whining, humming sound when the bird is in flight.

The rugged picture of manliness...for this particular hummingbird, anyway.

Female- about 4.1 in(~10.5 cm) long.  She weighs about 0.16 oz(~4.4g).  So females are a bit smaller than the male.  The bill is a duller red with the same black tip.  The dorsal part of the body is green, the ventral is white and lightly spotted on sides of breast and belly. The tail is centrally green, and the rest dark blue with contrasting broad white tips.  Her tail lacks streamers.

The more reserved female.

The bill contains an extendable, bifurcated(forked) tongue which comes in real handy for feeding.  It can also open its bill pretty wide if it needs to.

Now, on to the part that gives hummingbirds their names- the wings.  Hummingbirds are well known for their ability to hover in mid-air by rapidly flapping their wings.  The wings can flap 15–80 times per second (depending on the species-smaller birds tend to have a higher rate). They also have the ability to fly backwards, being the only group of birds able to do so. They can pretty much move any way in the air that they wish with great precision.

The motion that the wings take in order to hover is of a thin figure 8 pattern.  It allows the bird to give itself lift on both upward and downward strokes and ends up canceling out to allow the little guy to hover.  When moving, the wing takes circular strokes. If you want to find out more about their flight, definitely look it up- there's a bunch of technical sciencey stuff that would make this more tedious than it should be.  Their flight muscles are very strong and make up 30% of the total weight of the bird. They are able to hover in place for up to 50 minutes.  All this flight specialization takes its toll, though.  Hummingbirds are unable to walk or even shift around.  Their feet can still grasp perches, but there is no walking or hopping.

Habitat:

It's only in Jamaica, mon!  They inhabit most of the country except for the extreme east where the Black-billed variety reigns supreme.

Jamaica...it's awesome.

They are everywhere. (Being the most common hummingbird in the country will do that).  From sea level, to the canopy, to urban settlements.  Most commonly hanging out around 3,300ft [~1,000m] above sea level close to forest edges.

Diet:

Mostly nectar and also bugs to help obtain other nutrients they miss out on(nectar isn't very nutritious).  It uses that long forked tongue to lap up nectar from flowers. It can figure out sugar content and will reject flowers that don't have enough, usually below 12%.  They prefer flowers with around 25% sugar content.  They're capable of catching insects and spiders in mid flight or picking them off of plants.

The young are fed regurgitated insects. (That's good eatin'. )

Behavior:

Diurnal and arboreal.  They spend most of their lives sitting around and watching the world go by.  Hummingbirds feed in many small meals, consuming up to their own body weight in nectar and insects per day. They spend an average 10%-15% of their time feeding and 75%-80% being sedentary.  They rest so much because flying all day would be too costly.  Hummingbirds have the highest metabolisms of any other animal besides insects.  To prevent their inevitable death while sleeping, hummingbirds enter torpor every night.  Torpor is a short term state of decreased physiological activity in an animal, usually characterized by a reduced body temperature and rate of metabolism.  Basically it enters a kind of stasis so its body doesn't run itself out while the bird is inactive; metabolism drops to 1/15 of the rate of normal sleep.

They have a voice that is a loud, metallic-sounding ‘ting, ting, ting’ repeated several times or a prolonged “tee-tee-tee…”  often heard as a distress call.

I don't have any specific data, but most(if not all) hummingbirds engage in courtship flights to attract mates.  The male pulls a bunch of cool stunts and during this the wings beat faster than normal.  Males will also chase off their competition and if the female is sufficiently impressed...it's business time.

They'll breed all year round(hell, it's Jamaica...wouldn't you?), but chiefly from January to mid-May.  The nest is cup-shaped and made up of fine plant fibers and cobwebs, with lichen attached to outside for camouflage. The nest is placed on thin twig 3.3–10ft(1–3m) above the ground. The female lays two bean-sized eggs.  The incubation period is 17–19 days. Chicks are black with two dorsal rows of pale gray down.  The fledging period is 19–24 days. Young remain with female for three to four weeks.  The female may have up to three broods per year.  They may be able to live for up to a decade, but I'm not entirely sure...can't find a good source for that.

This is a rubythroat nest, but it's the same idea.

Interesting Facts:

The long tail feathers resemble the old-fashioned coattails of a doctor; hence, Jamaicans call it the "Doctor Bird."

Killing these birds is considered to bring bad fortune on one’s self in most parts of rural Jamaica.

In Aztec mythology, Huitzilopochtli, also spelled Uitzilopochtli, was a god of war and a sun god and the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan. He was sometimes represented as a hummingbird or with the feathers of a hummingbird on his head and left leg.  His name means "hummingbird of the south" or "he of the south" or "hummingbird on the left."

Several flowers and hummingbirds have evolved together and are damn near completely dependent on each other.  Those flowers are 'ornithophilous'.  (if my language skills are up to par, that means they're bird lovers. )

All hummingbird species are only native to the Americas.  Sorry, rest of the world.

A hummingbird's flight speed can average 25-30 mph, and can dive up to 60 mph.

The brain, 4.2% of its body weight, is proportionately the largest in the bird world.

The color red attracts hummingbirds, but they don't have a sense of smell...so hummingbird pollinated flowers have no scent.

Some Spanish names for the hummingbird:

Chupaflor - which means flower-sucker
Picaflor - which means flower nibbler

I leave you with this:

~Zoo