Scintillant Hummingbird
Selasphorus scintilla
eBird gives this description for the Scintillant Hummingbird: Small hummingbird, unique orange throat distinguishes male from all other hummingbirds in limited range. Female less obvious; she has speckled throat, orangey flanks, and all-rufous tail with black band and buffy tips. Focus on tail pattern. Found in fairly open areas, including forest edge and gardens.
The Birds of the World website introduces the Scintillant Hummingbird with this descriptive information: The Scintillant Hummingbird (Selasphorus scintilla Gould) is among the smallest of hummingbirds, and is the smallest within its range of the Pacific slope of Costa Rica and western Panama. Despite its diminutive size, it is a striking bird that is difficult to overlook, or to forget once seen. The wing trill of the adult male can be heard at a distance, and the male’s blazing orange gorget is spectacular against its rufous plumage. It appears to be most closely allied with Allen’s (S. sasin) and Rufous (S. rufus) hummingbirds of North America, as well as Glow-throated Hummingbird (S. ardens) of Panama. Scintillant is allopatric to all of these species, whereas it is sympatric with Volcano Hummingbird, S. flammula, a species with which Scintillant sometimes is confused. Swainson (1830) named the genus Selasphorus, which means “Light-bearing” (Coues 1882), with Rufous Hummingbird as the type. With a virtually identical gorget, the same description is apt for the Scintillant. Scintillant was described by Gould (1850), in which he noted its small size and beauty. Scintilla means “a spark” in Latin (Lewis and Short 1879), thus Selasphorus scintilla means a “light-bearing spark”. Scintillant Hummingbird is locally common but not widespread. As a result, relatively little is known about its basic biology. Good photos are presented by Fogden and Fogden (2006). The primary sources of information about it come from Stiles (1983, Stiles and Skutch 1989), Fogden and Fogden (2006), and recent field work with it in October 2009 (Clark et al. 2011; CJC unpublished data).
I met my first Scintillant Humminbird on the late morning of February 9, 2023, as our birding group was headed to Cerro Del Muerte. We saw this little fellow on one of our later stops, as we were getting to higher elevations. Although I didn’t get to see this bird display the famous orange throat, I was quite happy to add it to my life list!
