The ability to enter torpor to survive frigid mountain nights is also an amazing evolutionary adaptation of these and other hummingbirds. Broad-tailed Hummingbirds emit a loud “trill” with their wings to attract mates and defend their territories. They are well adapted to their feeding habits with hovering wings, long thin beaks, and grooved tongues that allow them to harvest the nectar of flowers and catch tiny insects. These tiny birds weigh only about 3.5 grams, or a bit over one tenth of an ounce.
Their breeding range stretches from central California to as far east as eastern Kansas and from southern Idaho to southwest Texas. Broad-tailed Hummingbirds are migratory and fly to summer breeding grounds in the western Rocky Mountains in the spring then return to Mexico and Guatemala to winter. Females lack the gorget, their breast feathers are a characteristic grey, and their throat may exhibit some red spotting.īroad-tailed Hummingbirds prefer meadows with abundant wildflowers flanked by forests. Male Broad-tailed Hummingbirds are easily distinguished from females by the iridescent red gorget (throat) feathers that develop during the first year of life. The Broad-tailed Hummingbird belongs to the taxonomic family Trochilidae – the hummingbirds – of which there are some 340 species, all in the Americas. Selasporus platycercus Broad-tailed hummingbird chicks.
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