The GIANT HUMMINGBIRD May Be Split Into Two Separate Species

The Giant Hummingbird is the largest of the hummingbirds. It weighs in at 20 to 30 grams, while the largest of the other hummingbirds barely exceeds 10 grams. Males and females look the same and are mostly cinnamon or rufous colored with a whitish rump and base of the tail. They’re found from southern Colombia through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia into Chile and Argentina.

I’ve photographed the Giant Hummingbird before and it’s a frequent visitor at our live cam in Urubamba, Peru. But I wanted to photograph this southernmost one because current research is suggesting that this one may be an entirely different species from the more northern one.

This hummingbird is frequently seen in southern coastal Chile during its breeding season, but then it disappears and nobody really knew where they went. It was assumed that they flew further north to join the others. But in 2016 Jesse Williamson, a researcher working on her doctoral thesis, outfitted some of them with trackers. The information from the trackers showed that these birds flew up to 13,000 feet and stayed in the high Andes for several months. This is a roundtrip flight of around 5000 miles. Further DNA analysis has shown that the more northern resident and southern migratory populations of Giant Hummingbirds likely separated at least two million years ago.

Based on this DNA analysis and migration data, it is recommended that this bird be split into two separate species. So far the International Ornithological Congress is still treating them as two subspecies of the Giant Hummingbird. But if they are eventually split, I have seen and photographed both of them.

The male has brown upperparts and a white breast with a wide blue-black stripe down the middle. His shiny green gorget has a thin blue-black border at the bottom. His tail is bronzy black with white at the base of the outer feathers.

Both the male and female have decurved black bills. She is dull brown above and whitish below with fine dark speckles in a linear pattern on her throat. The outer three or four pairs of her tail feathers are white at the tips and base.

My name is Carole Turek and I am on a quest to photograph every single hummingbird species on the planet! There are over 366 types and I currently have photographed more than 260 of them.
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