The red-billed streamertail (''Trochilus polytmus''), also known as the doctor bird, scissor-tail or scissors tail hummingbird, is a species of

hummingbird Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the biological family Trochilidae. With about 361 species and 113 genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but the vast majority of the species are found in the tropics aro ...

in the "emeralds", tribe Trochilini of subfamily Trochilinae. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

and is the national bird of the country.HBW and BirdLife International (2021) Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world. Version 6. Available at: http://datazone.birdlife.org/userfiles/file/Species/Taxonomy/HBW-BirdLife_Checklist_v6_Dec21.zip retrieved August 7, 2022

Taxonomy and systematics

The red-billed streamertail was formally described by the Swedish naturalist

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

in 1758 in the tenth edition of his ''

Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomen ...

'' under the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Trochilus polytmus''. Linnaeus quoted the description in Latin by the Irish physician Patrick Browne in his ''The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica'' which had been published two years earlier in 1756. The specific epithet ''polytmus'' is from 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 peri ...

''polutimos'' meaning "costly" or "valuable". The

International Ornithological Committee The International Ornithologists' Union, formerly known as the International Ornithological Committee, is a group of about 200 international ornithologists, and is responsible for the International Ornithological Congress and other international ...

(IOC),

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

's ''

Handbook of the Birds of the World The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. T ...

'', and the

Clements taxonomy ''The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World'' is a book by Jim Clements which presents a list of the bird species of the world. The most recent printed version is the sixth edition (2007), but has been updated yearly, the last version in 2022 ...

treat the red-billed streamertail and

black-billed streamertail The black-billed streamertail (''Trochilus scitulus'') is a species of hummingbird in the "emeralds", tribe Trochilini of subfamily Trochilinae. It is endemic to eastern Jamaica.HBW and BirdLife International (2021) Handbook of the Birds of th ...

(''T. scitulus'') as separate species. However, the North 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 ...

calls ''T. polytmus'' "streamertail" and assign the red-billed and black-billed forms to it as subspecies.Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2022. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: v2022. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/ retrieved November 10, 2022 The two species (or subspecies) interbreed in their narrow contact zone.Brokaw, J. (2020). Streamertail (''Trochilus polytmus''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.stream1.01 retrieved September 5, 2022 The species as defined by the IOC is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

: no

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

are recognised.

Description

The male red-billed streamertail is long including the tail streamers and weighs . The female is about long and weighs . The adult male has a coral red bill with a black tip. It has a dull black to blue-black crown; it and the nape form a deep velvety black crest. The rest of its upperparts are bright metallic green. Its tail is black with a green to bronzy green gloss. The next to outermost pair of tail feathers is very long, giving the species its English name. The male's face and most of its underparts are metallic yellowish green; the undertail

coverts A covert feather or tectrix on a bird is one of a set of feathers, called coverts (or ''tectrices''), which, as the name implies, cover other feathers. The coverts help to smooth airflow over the wings and tail. Ear coverts The ear coverts are s ...

are blue-black or black with a bluish gloss. The adult female's bill is a duller red than the male's. Its upperparts are metallic bronze green to greenish bronze that is duller on the crown. Its tail lacks the male's streamers. Its central pair of feathers are bright bronze green and the rest black with some bronze green gloss, and the outermost two pairs have wide white tips. Its underparts are white with metallic bronze green spots on the breast and flanks. Immature males are similar to the adult but lack the tail streamers; its tail feathers have bronze green tips.

Distribution and habitat

The red-billed streamertail is found throughout Jamaica except in the extreme eastern end, where the black-billed is found. It inhabits evergreen

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 f ...

, lowland tropical forest, and

secondary forest A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. ...

. It shuns mangroves and arid highlands. In elevation it ranges from sea level to ; it is considered fairly common in the lowlands and abundant at middle and higher elevations.

Behavior

Movement

The red-billed streamertail is an elevational migrant.

Feeding

The red-billed streamertail forages for nectar at a wide variety of native and introduced flowering species; it especially prefers ''

Besleria lutea ''Besleria'' is a genus of ca. 200 species of large herbs and soft-stemmed subshrubs or shrubs in the flowering plant family Gesneriaceae. They occur in Central America, South America, and the West Indies. The closely related genus ''Gasteranth ...

''. It forages at all heights from the ground to the canopy. It has also been observed "robbing" nectar from holes in flowers created by

bananaquit The bananaquit (''Coereba flaveola'') is a species of passerine bird in the tanager family Thraupidae. Before the development of molecular genetics in the 21st century, its relationship to other species was uncertain and it was either placed with ...

s (''Coereba flaveola'') and visiting wells drilled by

yellow-bellied sapsucker The yellow-bellied sapsucker (''Sphyrapicus varius'') is a medium-sized woodpecker that breeds in Canada and the northeastern United States. Taxonomy The yellow-bellied sapsucker was described and illustrated using a hand-coloured plate by the E ...

s (''Sphyrapicus varius''). In addition to nectar it feeds on small insects taken while hovering or gleaned from foliage or spiderweb.

Breeding

Both sexes of the red-billed streamertail aggressively defend territories. Males court females that enter their territory. Both sexes perch and repeatedly nod their heads, after which the male flies up and down in front of the female while spreading its tail streamers. The species breeds at any time of year, mostly between January and May, and may raise three broods in a year. The nest is a cup of fine plant fibers bound with spiderweb with lichen on the outside. It is typically built on a fine twig between above the ground. The female incubates the clutch of two eggs for 17 to 19 days and fledging occurs 19 to 24 days after hatch.

Vocal and non-vocal sounds

The red-billed streamertail's vocalizations include "a loud metallic ''ting'' or ''teet'' and a prolonged ''twink-twink-twink'' dropping in pitch at the end." Adult males in flight produce a distinctive whirring sound. The whirring is synchronized with the wingbeats and video footage shows primary feather eight (P8) bending with each downstroke, creating a gap that produces the fluttering sound.

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

has assessed the red-billed streamertail as being of Least Concern. It has a very large range but its population size and trend are not known. No immediate threats have been identified. "The ready occupation of man-made habitats suggests that habitat loss is unlikely to be a problem."

In popular culture

The streamertail is featured in Ian Fleming's

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

short story '' For Your Eyes Only''. The first line of the story, the title story of the 1960 collection, reads, "The most beautiful bird in Jamaica, and some say the most beautiful bird in the world, is the streamer-tail or doctor humming-bird."

Gallery

Red-billed streamertail (Trochilus poltmus) juvenile male.jpg, Juvenile male Red-billed streamertail (Trochilus poltmus) juvenile male feeding 2.jpg, Juvenile male feeding Red-billed streamertail (Trochilus polytmus) feeding.jpg, Adult male feeding Red-billed streamertail (Trochilus polytmus) female in flight 2.JPG, Female in flight

References

External links

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q952376

red-billed streamertail The red-billed streamertail (''Trochilus polytmus''), also known as the doctor bird, scissor-tail or scissors tail hummingbird, is a species of hummingbird in the "emeralds", tribe Trochilini of subfamily Trochilinae. It is endemic to Jamaica ...

Hummingbird species of Central America Endemic birds of Jamaica National symbols of Jamaica