White-eared Hummingbird - BirdForum Opus

Male
Photo © by gatafrancesca
Chiapas, Mexico, October 2006

Basilinna leucotis

Hylocharis leucotis

Identification

Juvenile, subspecies borealis
Photo © by Brian Hubbs
Cochise Co, Arizona, 20 July 2020

9-10 cm (3½-4 in)
Black-tipped red bill
Male

• Green upper and underparts
• Purple crown
• Metallic blue-green chin
• Long white stripe behind its eye
  

Female

• Green upperparts
• Whitish underparts with greenish spots
• Broad black stripe behind eye

Distribution

Photo © by UncleGus_24
Madera Canyon, Arizona, 1 August 2009

North and Central America: found in the highlands of south-western USA to Nicaragua.

Taxonomy

This is a polytypic species^[1] consisting of 3 subspecies.

Subspecies

• B. l. borealis:

• Mountains of south-eastern Arizona and northern Mexico

• B. l. leucotis:

• Highland pine forests of central and southern Mexico to Guatemala

• B. l. pygmaea:

• Highlands of El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua

Habitat

Pine-oak woodland and conifer forests in mountains, 4500-10,000 ft. In the U.S. it is rarely seen below oak belt of the mountains.

Behaviour

Diet

Their main diet consists of nectar from a variety of plants. They also eat small flying insects. Readily visits garden feeders.

Breeding

They construct a cup nest from plant down, using lichen to decorate it. It is placed between 1-6 metres above the ground. They may sometimes build on top of an old nest. The clutch contains 2 plain white eggs which are tended by the female alone. They hatch after about 2 weeks, fledging between 23-28 days.

They occasionally try to raise a second brood.

References

1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2021. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2021. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
2. Dickinson EC (ed.) 2003. The Howard & Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World. 3rd ed. Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, USA. ISBN 9780691117010
3. Gill, F and D Donsker (Eds). 2014. IOC World Bird Names (version 4.3). Available at http://www.worldbirdnames.org/.
4. hummingbird-picturesGuide
5. Arizmendi, M. d. C., C. I. Rodríguez-Flores, C. A. Soberanes-González, and T. S. Schulenberg (2020). White-eared Hummingbird (Hylocharis leucotis), 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.whehum.01
6. BirdForum Member observations

• List of references

Recommended Citation

• BirdForum Opus contributors. (2025) White-eared Hummingbird. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 18 May 2025 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/White-eared_Hummingbird

External Links

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