Berylline Hummingbird, Saucerottia beryllina

Berylline Hummingbird, Saucerottia beryllina viola. Photograph taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, November 2019. Photograph and identification courtesy of David F Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

Berylline Hummingbird, Saucerottia beryllina viola. Photograph taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, December 2017. Photograph and identification courtesy of David F Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

The Berylline Hummingbird, Saucerottia beryllina viola, is one of five subspecies of Berylline Hummingbird, four of which are found in Mexico. They are a member of the Trochilidae Family of Hummingbirds, which has three hundred fifty-two members placed in one hundred thirteen genera, and one of ten global species of the Saucerottia Genus. They are known in Mexico as amazilia berilina.

The Berylline Hummingbird is mid-sized in stature. The sexes are similar in appearance with the exception that the females have paler markings on the throat the belly is a deeper gray and their bill lacks the pinkish base. They have a bronze-green to coppery head, a back, and rump that has grayish tinges, and a cinnamon-colored belly. The base of their primaries and secondaries are chestnut; their underparts are glittering golden green, and the upper tail coverts and rectrices are dark violet-blue. Their bill is straight, medium-sized and black except for the pinkish basal half of the mandible.

The Berylline Hummingbird is found in the foothills with oak and pine forests, forest edges, scrub, clearings with trees, thorn forests, and suburban gardens at elevations up to 3,000 m (10,000 feet) being most common at altitudes between 500 m (1,640 feet) and 1,800 m (5,900 feet). They are only able to move via flight as their legs are unable to support their body weight. They consume a wide variety of floral nectars from both native and introduced plants and limited amounts of small insects. The Berylline hummingbirds are poorly studied and very little about their behavioral patterns has been documented.

The viola subspecies is found in Western Mexico along the Pacific Slope from Sonora to Michoacán and Guerrero. The four other subspecies are found in Southern Mexico and in Central America. The northern populations migrate to warm locations for the winter; the southern populations are non-migratory being year-round residents but are known to make local altitudinal migrations to lower elevations after breeding to follow seasonal blooms of trees and shrubs.

From a conservation perspective, the Berylline Hummingbird is categorized by the IUCN as Least Concern with stable, widely distributed populations.