Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

Broad-billed Hum­ming­birds Cy­nan­thus latirostris are found pri­mar­ily in north­west­ern Mex­ico. They do oc­ca­sion­ally range into south­ern Ari­zona, south­west New Mex­ico and west Texas in the spring and sum­mer. They are also oc­ca­sion­ally re­ported in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. (Ter­res 1980;US Dis­tri­b­u­tion and Abun­dance 2000).

• Biogeographic Regions
• nearctic
  • native

Habi­tat

The Broad-billed Hum­ming­bird is com­mon in Mex­ico as well as in south-west­ern United States. They tend to live and nest in areas such as canyons, foothills and streambeds. Their dis­tri­b­u­tion in any par­tic­u­lar area is closely tied to the avail­abil­ity and abun­dance of ap­pro­pri­ate food plants. (Sayre,1999; Ter­res, 1980).

• Terrestrial Biomes
• desert or dune
• chaparral

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Broad-billed Hum­ming­birds are con­sid­ered a small hum­ming­bird. Their av­er­age length is 8.25 - 10.2 cm (31/4 - 4 inches) long, with a wing­spread of ap­prox­i­mately 12.7 cm (5 inches). The males weigh about 3.7 grams (0.125 oz), while the fe­males are a lit­tle lighter at 3.4 grams (0.1 oz). Broad-billed Hum­ming­birds have a bright red bill with a black tip. The adult males have metal­lic green bod­ies, vi­brant blue throats, white un­der­tail coverts and black forked tails. The adult fe­males have metal­lic green upper parts and gray­ish throats and un­der­sides. Their tails have pale outer tips. Most dis­tin­guish­ing about the fe­male is the thin white spot be­hind her eye.

The method in which hum­ming­bird wings are at­tached to the shoul­der al­lows the wings to move in var­i­ous an­gles, en­abling the hum­ming­bird to hover, fly straight up, side­ways, and even back­wards. This unique method of flight re­quires large flight and pec­toral mus­cles, which weigh about 30 per­cent of their body weight. The hum­ming­bird's wing beat is ap­prox­i­mately 70-75 beats per sec­ond (Page and Mor­ton 1989; Sayer 1997; Ter­res 1980).

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Range mass

  3.4 to 3.7 g

  0.12 to 0.13 oz

Re­pro­duc­tion

Broad-billed Hum­ming­birds breed from Jan­u­ary to May in Mex­ico and in the United States from April to Au­gust. Breed­ing sea­son is closely tied to the flow­er­ing sea­son of some plants. Broad-billed Hum­ming­birds are polyg­y­nous, mean­ing that males have more than one mate at the same time. Males who de­fend a ter­ri­tory are more suc­cess­ful than "floaters" (those with­out a ter­ri­tory) at at­tract­ing fe­males. The males at­tract fe­males with songs, and their songs tend to be very sim­ple in de­sign. When the fe­male re­spond to the ad­ver­tis­ing male, it usu­ally re­sults in cop­u­la­tion. The fe­male then builds the nest. The nests are mainly built in trees or large scrubs ap­prox­i­mately 1.22 - 2.13m (4-7 feet) above the ground, and are usu­ally found near streambeds or a dry wash. Ma­te­r­ial used to make the nests may in­clude grasses, leaves, bark and other plant ma­te­r­ial. Once the nest is com­plete, the fe­male will lay one to two elon­gated, white eggs. She in­cu­bates the eggs from 14-23 days, and rears the young with­out the as­sis­tance of the male. (Camp­bell 1985; Mar­tin 1987; Per­rins 1985; Sayre 1999; Ter­res 1980).

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• oviparous

Lifes­pan/Longevity

• Average lifespan
  Status: wild

  73 months

  Bird Banding Laboratory

Be­hav­ior

In gen­eral, ag­gres­sive be­hav­ior of hum­ming­birds in­cludes threat vo­cal­iza­tions, dives, and chas­ing of in­trud­ers. Most ag­gres­sive be­hav­ior is as­so­ci­ated with ter­ri­to­r­ial de­fense. Male hum­ming­birds typ­i­cally de­fend feed­ing ter­ri­to­ries as well as breed­ing sites, and fe­males de­fend nest­ing sites. A large per­cent­age of the male's time and en­ergy is used to de­fend his ter­ri­tory . Such de­fense usu­ally be­gins in the air. It can in­clude claw­ing, push­ing, even using their bill as a weapon.

It was be­lieved at one time that hum­ming­birds sucked the nec­tar through their bills. It is now proven that they use their forked-tongue to lap nec­tar from flow­ers.

Many kinds of hum­ming­birds some­times enter into short states of tor­por, which is used to con­serve their en­ergy and lower their me­tab­o­lism. This usu­ally hap­pens when the night tem­per­a­ture is low or if the hum­ming­bird has low food re­serves. The av­er­age body tem­per­a­ture of the hum­ming­bird is 41 de­grees Cel­sius (105 de­grees Fahren­heit). Dur­ing tor­por, a hum­ming­bird's body tem­per­a­ture will lower to about the same tem­per­a­ture as the air. In a state of tor­por, their ap­prox­i­mate meta­balic rate is 1/50 of that of an alert hum­ming­bird. Hum­ming­birds in this state can ap­pear dead. Their me­tab­o­lism rate is so re­duced that they may ac­tu­ally stop breath­ing for a short pe­riod of time (Per­rins 1985; Sayre 1999).

• Key Behaviors
• flies
• motile

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

• Perception Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic
• chemical

Food Habits

The diet of the Broad-billed Hum­ming­bird is pri­mar­ily nec­tar from flow­ers such as the red blos­soms of Ocotillo and Paint­brushes. They eat sugar-wa­ter from hum­ming­bird feed­ers as well. Be­cause of their meta­bolic rate, it is not un­com­mon for them to eat five to ten times an hour. As a re­sult of their high-en­ergy out­put, hum­ming­birds need to con­sume 1 ½ - 3 times their body weight in nec­tar each day. Broad-billed Hum­ming­birds also need pro­tein; there­fore they are known to eat many in­sects such as aphids, leafhop­pers, bugs, and root gnats. Hum­ming­birds will con­sume more water in a day than solid foods (Sayre 1999; Terre 1980).

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Broad-billed Hum­ming­birds pol­li­nate many flow­ers. As a re­sult, this helps to sup­port the ecomonic growth of the or­na­men­tal hor­ti­cul­ture in­dus­try.(Page and Mor­ton 1989)

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

In the nine­teenth cen­tury, hun­dreds of thou­sands of hum­ming­birds were killed in South Amer­ica and sent to Eng­land to be used as dec­o­ra­tions. Some in­di­vid­u­als would have the col­or­ful birds stuffed and placed on dis­play in their homes. Many were used in the de­sign and dec­o­ra­tion of women's hats. It has been re­ported that up to 400,000 skins were im­ported in a sin­gle year by one Lon­don dealer.

(Mar­tin 1987)

Cur­rently, there are nu­mer­ous non-profit groups who are ded­i­cated to the study and pro­tec­tion of hum­ming­birds, for ex­am­ple the Hum­mer/Bird Study Group http://​www.​hbsg.​org and the Hum­ming­bird So­ci­ety http://​www.​hummingbird.​org.

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• US Migratory Bird Act

  Protected

• US Federal List

  No special status

• CITES

  Appendix II

• State of Michigan List

  No special status

Con­trib­u­tors

Christy Platt (au­thor), Fresno City Col­lege, Carl Jo­hans­son (ed­i­tor), Fresno City Col­lege.

Ref­er­ences

2000. "US Dis­tri­b­u­tion and Abun­dance" (On-line). Ac­cessed Sep­tem­ber 18, 2000 at http://​www.​i-bird.​com/​Species/​BroadbilledHumgbrd.​htm.

Camp­bell, B., E. Lack. 1985. A Dic­tio­nary of Birds. South Car­olina, USA: Buteo Books.

Jones, J. 1990. Where The Birds Are- A Guide to All 50 States and Canada. New York, New York: William Mor­row and Com­pany, Inc..

Mar­tin, B. 1987. World Birds. Great Britain: Guin­ness Su­perla­tives Ltd..

Page, J., E. Mor­ton. 1989. The Smith­son­ian Book of Birds Lords of the Air. New York: The Smith­son­ian In­sti­tute.

Per­rins, C., A. Mid­dle­ton. 1985. The En­cy­clo­pe­dia of Birds. New York, New York: Facts on File, Inc..

Sauer, J. 7/27/97. "USGS Patux­ent- Bird Pop­u­la­tion Stud­ies" (On-line). Ac­cessed 10/9/00 at http://​www.​mbr.​nbs.​gov.

Sayre, J., A. Sayre. 1996. The Sun Catch­ers- Hum­ming­birds. Min­netonka, Minn: Cre­ative Pub­lish­ing In­ter­na­tional.

Ter­res, J. 1980. The Audubon So­ci­ety En­cy­clo­pe­dia of North Amer­i­can Birds. New York, New York: Al­fred A. Knopf.