The rufous-shafted woodstar (''Chaetocercus jourdanii'') is a species of hummingbird in tribe

Mellisugini Mellisugini is one of the three tribes that make up the subfamily Trochilinae in the hummingbird family Trochilidae. The other two tribes in the subfamily are Lampornithini (mountain gems) and Trochilini (emeralds). The informal name "bees" has ...

of subfamily

Trochilinae Trochilinae is one of the six subfamilies that make up the hummingbird family Trochilidae. The subfamily is divided into three tribes: Lampornithini (mountain gems) containing 18 species, Mellisugini (bees) containing 37 species and Trochili ...

, the "bee hummingbirds". It is found in Colombia,

Trinidad and Tobago Trinidad and Tobago (, ), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated south of ...

, and

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

Taxonomy and systematics

The rufous-shafted woodstar was formally described in 1839 by the French ornithologist

Jules Bourcier Claude Marie Jules Bourcier (19 February 1797 – 9 March 1873) was a French naturalist and expert on hummingbirds.Prosopo ...

based on specimens collected in Trinidad. Bourcier placed the new species in the genus ''Ornismya'' and coined the binomial name ''Ornismya jourdanii''. The species is now placed in the genus ''Chaetocercus'' that was introduced in 1855 by the English zoologist

George Robert Gray George Robert Gray FRS (8 July 1808 – 6 May 1872) was an English zoologist and author, and head of the ornithological section of the British Museum, now the Natural History Museum, in London for forty-one years. He was the younger brother ...

with the rufous-shafted woodstar as the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specime ...

. The genus name is a combination of the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

words ''khaitē'', meaning "hair" and ''kerkos'', meaning "tail". The specific epithet was chosen by Bourcier to honour the French zoologist

Claude Jourdan Claude Jourdan (18 June 1803, in Heyrieux – 12 February 1873, in Lyon) was a French zoologist and paleontologist. In Lyon he was a professor of zoology to the Faculté des sciences, and a professor of comparative anatomy at the École des Beaux ...

. Three subspecies are recognised: * ''C. j. andinus'' Phelps, WH & Phelps, WH Jr, 1949 – northeast Colombia and west Venezuela * ''C. j. rosae'' ( Bourcier & Mulsant, 1846) – north Venezuela * ''C. j. jourdanii'' (Bourcier, 1839) – northeast Venezuela and Trinidad

Description

The rufous-shafted woodstar is long. Both sexes of all subspecies have a straight black bill and white patches on their flank behind the wing. Males of the subspecies differ only in the color of their

gorget A gorget , from the French ' meaning throat, was a band of linen wrapped around a woman's neck and head in the medieval period or the lower part of a simple chaperon hood. The term later described a steel or leather collar to protect the th ...

: violet in the nominate, rosy crimson in ''C. j. rosae'', and a less purple rosy in ''C. j. andinus''. Females do not differ across the subspecies. Males have bottle green upperparts, a white breast, and a green belly. Their tail is deeply forked; the feathers are black with orange shafts. Females are bronzy green above and rufous below. The tail has two rounded "lobes"; the central feathers are green and the others cinnamon with a dark bar near the end.Züchner, T. and G. M. Kirwan (2020). Rufous-shafted Woodstar (''Chaetocercus jourdanii''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.ruswoo1.01 retrieved July 25, 2022 The male rufous-shafted woodstar sings "a rising 3–4-note 'tssit, tssit, tssit, tssit'" from a treetop perch. As of July 2020,

Cornell Lab of Ornithology The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a member-supported unit of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, which studies birds and other wildlife. It is housed in the Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity in Sapsucker Woods Sanctuar ...

Macaulay Library The Macaulay Library is the world's largest archive of animal sounds. It includes more than 33 million photographs, 1.2 million audio recordings, and over two hundred thousand videos covering 96 percent of the world's bird species. There are an eve ...

has very few recordings of the species and

xeno-canto xeno-canto is a citizen science project and repository in which volunteers record, upload and annotate recordings of birdsong and bird calls. Since it began in 2005, it has collected over 575,000 sound recordings from more than 10,000 species w ...

has none.

Distribution and habitat

The nominate subspecies of rufous-shafted woodstar is found in northeastern Venezuela's Sucre and

Monagas ) , anthem = '' Himno del Estado Monagas'' , image_map = Monagas in Venezuela.svg , map_alt = , map_caption = Location within Venezuela , pushpin_map = , pushpin_m ...

states and, according to some taxonomies, in Trinidad as well. However, the South American Classification Committee of the

American Ornithological Society The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its m ...

lists it as resident in Venezuela but only a

vagrant Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, temporar ...

to Trinidad. Subspecies ''C. j. rosae'' is found in northern Venezuela between the states of

Falcón ) , anthem = , image_map = Falcon in Venezuela.svg , map_alt = , map_caption = Location within Venezuela , pushpin_map = , pushpin_map_alt = , pushpin_mapsiz ...

and Miranda. ''C. j. andinus'' is found in the Sierra de Perijá that straddles the border between Colombia and Venezuela, the eastern Andes of Colombia, and the Andes of Venezuela between

Táchira Táchira State ( es, Estado Táchira, ) is one of the 24 states of Venezuela. The state capital is San Cristóbal. Táchira State covers a total surface area of and as of the 2011 census, had a population of 1,168,908. At the end of the 19t ...

and

Lara Lara may refer to: Places * Lara (state), a state in Venezuela *Electoral district of Lara, an electoral district in Victoria, Australia * Lara, Antalya, an urban district in Turkey * Lara, Victoria, a township in Australia * Lara de los In ...

states. The rufous-shafted woodstar inhabits semi-open and open landscapes such as scrublands, the edge of

montane forest Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is a crucial ...

, and coffee plantations; it occasionally visits the lower parts of the '' páramo''. In elevation it ranges between , though there is some question about the accuracy of records higher than . At least in Venezuela, the rufous-shafted woodstar is known to move between higher elevations in the dry season and lower ones in the rainy season.

Behavior

Food and feeding

The rufous-shafted woodstar forages at all levels of the vegetation, but more often between the middle and upper strata. It takes nectar from a variety of flowering plants and trees such as ''Inga''. It also eats small

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and cuticle made of chiti ...

s. It does not defend feeding territories, and because of its small size and slow bumblebee-like flight it is sometimes able to feed in the territories of other hummingbirds.

Breeding

Almost nothing is known about the rufous-shafted woodstar's breeding phenology. Observations in Colombia indicate that its breeding season there includes November.

Status

The IUCN has assessed the white-bellied woodstar as being of Least Concern. It has a fairly large range, and though its population size is not known it is believed to be stable. It is considered rare to locally common. No immediate threats are known, and it "seems to accept man-made habitats like plantations."

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1270211 rufous-shafted woodstar Birds of the Venezuelan Andes Birds of the Venezuelan Coastal Range Birds of Trinidad and Tobago rufous-shafted woodstar rufous-shafted woodstar Taxonomy articles created by Polbot