The Life History of Rieffer's Hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl tzacatl) in Panama and Honduras

Abstract

ß (Plates VIII-X.) UPON his arrival almost anywhere in the lowlands of Central America, the f•rst Hummingbird which the traveller with an interest in ornithology is likely to encounter is a medium-sized species with brilliant, metallic green body and head, a bright chestnut-brown tail and a long, slender, slightly curved, black bill, known to the scientific world as Amaxilia t•acatl t•acatl (De la Llave), to Americans by the book name Rieffer's Hummingbird, and to the natives by no name of specific distinction at all. It is a bird of wide distribution, and from below the equator in Ecuador it ranges northward through twenty-eight degrees of latitude and, crossing the Tropic of Cancer, is found in the lower Rio Grande Valley in Mexico? A single individual was once captured alive on the northern side of the river near Brownsville, Texas, but apparently its presence in United States territory is rare or accidental s From the hot, humid lowlands of the Caribbean coast of Central America and Colombia to the cool plateaus of Bogot• and Guate-mala City, this adaptable creature fmds itself at home. It seems everywhere to prefer open country to the dark, sunless lowland forests.