Marvelous Spatuletail Hummingbird

By Mark Walker

(02/21/2011) The spatuletail hummingbird is among the most rare and striking of birds.The species lives in just a few locations in Peru, and is unusual not just because of its rarity, but also because of its extreme mating behaviour.

Unusually among hummingbirds, the bird has just four tail feathers. In males, two of these feathers grow to three or four times the bird's body length, each ending in a large violet-blue disc; the spatule. In an amazing display, a male then advertises its quality as a mate to a female by hovering in front of her while furiously waving his spatules about. As part of his dance he'll jump backward and forwards in the air over a branch and make a snapping sound in the air.

It was thought he actually snapped those spatule discs together to generate the noise, however, the high speed film of the mating sequence, captured at hundreds of frames per second, reveals that not to be true, since the sound actually comes from its mouth.

Hummingbirds do everything at super high speed. He would do a dance with a twig where he hops over and over backwards and forwards across mid air. He'd do that 14 times in seven seconds. It's really really quick.

The display costs so much energy that the males struggle to maintain it.

He'll stand up and go da da da and you'll hear snap snap snap from his beak and it'll all be over and he'll be sitting down for an hour, it isn't known if the males regrow their extraordinary tail feathers each year, or whether they can attract females if one is missing.