▶️Blue-throated Hillstar (New Species Highest Elevation Hummingbird) [View all]

The Blue-throated Hillstar was recently discovered in Southern Ecuador (2017) by a team of local and international ornithologists. It is restricted to an area of about 100 square kilometers, and researchers estimate there are no more than 200 mature individuals. Its small range, specialized habitat, and threats from human activity mean that it's likely to be classified as critically endangered.

Threats are the intentional burning of its grassland paramo habitat for cattle grazing, extensive conifer plantations, and general agricultural expansion, plus the more recent problem of prospective open-pit mining for metals.

This medium-sized hummingbird is around 13cm in length, with its slightly decurved bill allowing for feeding on the Puya sp. plant's curved flowers, as well as the Chuquiragua (Aster genus) shrub. Its habitat is open paramo and riverine bush between 3300 and 3700masl around the Cerro de Arcos massif. It is easily understandable how this location produced a new species of Hillstar- being a remote, high mountain range that is isolated and sandwiched between the ranges of two other Hillstar species.

Hillstars are unusual among hummingbirds - they are the highest elevation hummingbird in the world, occurring in the most rugged, isolated, and inaccessible parts of the highest Andes, where they roost in caves, forage close to the ground, and spend half their lives in hypothermic torpor.

Huge thanks to the Jocotoco Foundation for the help in making this video.