THE BLACK- FRONTED HUMMINGBIRD -ERAKI

These are called as black fronted medium sized humming birds endemic to Baja California.

 Classification

            Kingdom –  Animalia

            Phylum –     Chordata 

            Class –        Aves

            Order-         Apodiformes

            Family –      Trochilidae

            Genus-        Basilinna

            Species-      xantusii 

Xantus is a mexican , medium sized hummingbird and named after scientist John xantus de vessey. It is distributed to the southern baja peninsula.The plumage on the upper side is green in colour and the tail is straight.The male and female have white and black stripes near the eye and the  male has green and the female has a brownish throat. males crown and face is bluish black while the female has light colour with brown colour below the eye strip. The bill of male is red with black tips and the female is blackish.Xantus also known as Precision flyers which hover flights with very fast wingbeats.

These birds feed on nectar from brightly coloured flowers, shrubs, trees and mainly favours flowers with high sugar content which they extract by long straw like tongue and hang on flower while feeding.these birds also take small insects and spiders as a source of protein  which is required during breeding season for development of their young ones.  

Humming birds are always solitary but during mating there is involvement of male. Male and female neither roam in groups or in pairs. Males court females by flying in a U shape pattern and get separate from them after copulation.The females are involved in parental care, nest location and selection as the males protect the territory by showing aerial flights and intimidating displays  while the females incubate the eggs alone.The female also builds up the nest from plant fibres woven together on green moss as it shows camouflage for the protection in a shrub or bush of tree and give strength to nest by spider webbing and other sticky material which provide it with elastic quality to stretch when chicks grow and need more space.she broods the chicks for two weeks and they left nest when get 20 days old.

These are listed in the ‘Least Concern’ category by IUCN as their global population is not known but at some of their distributed areas there is concern because of intervention in their breeding habitat affecting their population.

By – Pragya Joshi

Content Writer (Erakina By RTMN)

18/12/2021