Rufous-shafted woodstar facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Rufous-shafted woodstar |
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Chaetocercus
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jourdanii
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The rufous-shafted woodstar (Chaetocercus jourdanii) is a tiny hummingbird found in Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. It belongs to a group of hummingbirds called "bee hummingbirds" because of their small size.
Contents
About the Rufous-shafted Woodstar
Naming and Types
Scientists give every animal a special two-part name. The rufous-shafted woodstar was first described in 1839 by a French scientist named Jules Bourcier. He found specimens of this bird in Trinidad.
Later, another scientist, George Robert Gray, placed it in a group called Chaetocercus. This name comes from ancient Greek words meaning "hair" and "tail," which describes some of its features. The second part of its name, jourdanii, honors a French zoologist named Claude Jourdan.
There are three slightly different types, or subspecies, of the rufous-shafted woodstar:
- C. j. andinus – found in parts of Colombia and western Venezuela.
- C. j. rosae – found in northern Venezuela.
- C. j. jourdanii – found in northeastern Venezuela and Trinidad.
What It Looks Like
This hummingbird is quite small, usually about 6 to 8 centimeters (about 2.4 to 3.1 inches) long. Both male and female birds have a straight black beak. They also have white patches on their sides, just behind their wings.
Male woodstars have bright, shiny colors. Their upper body is a beautiful bottle green. They have a white chest and a green belly. The males also have a special patch of colored feathers on their throat called a gorget. This gorget can be violet, rosy crimson, or a less purple rosy color, depending on the subspecies. Their tail is deeply forked, with black feathers and orange shafts.
Female woodstars look a bit different. They are bronzy green on top and a reddish-brown color underneath. Their tail is not forked like the males'. Instead, it has two rounded parts. The middle feathers are green, and the others are cinnamon with a dark bar near the end.
Sounds and Calls
Male rufous-shafted woodstars sing a rising song from high up in trees. It sounds like "tssit, tssit, tssit, tssit." It's quite rare to hear recordings of this bird, so scientists don't have many examples of its calls.
Where It Lives and Its Home
Distribution
The rufous-shafted woodstar lives in different areas depending on its subspecies.
- The C. j. jourdanii subspecies is found in northeastern Venezuela. Some scientists also say it lives in Trinidad, but others believe it only visits Trinidad sometimes.
- The C. j. rosae subspecies lives in northern Venezuela.
- The C. j. andinus subspecies is found in the mountains between Colombia and Venezuela, and in the Andes mountains of Colombia and Venezuela.
Habitat
These hummingbirds like to live in places that are partly open, like scrublands. They can also be found at the edges of montane forests (forests in mountains) and in coffee farms. Sometimes, they visit the lower parts of high-altitude grasslands called páramo.
They usually live at elevations between 900 and 3000 meters (about 2,950 to 9,840 feet) above sea level. In Venezuela, they might move to lower elevations during the rainy season and higher ones during the dry season.
How It Behaves
Food and Feeding
The rufous-shafted woodstar looks for food at all levels of plants and trees, but mostly in the middle and upper parts. It drinks nectar from many different kinds of flowering plants and trees, like Inga. It also eats small arthropods, which are tiny creatures like insects.
These hummingbirds are small and fly slowly, almost like a bumblebee. This helps them sometimes feed in areas that other, larger hummingbirds might try to protect.
Reproduction
Scientists don't know much about how the rufous-shafted woodstar reproduces. However, some observations in Colombia suggest that their breeding season there includes November.
Conservation Status
The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) has listed the rufous-shafted woodstar as a species of "Least Concern." This means that it is not currently in danger of disappearing.
It lives in a fairly large area, and even though its exact population size isn't known, scientists believe it is stable. It can be rare in some places but common in others. There are no known immediate threats to this bird. It also seems to do well in places changed by humans, like plantations.
