Black Jacobin

Florisuga fusca

Mostly black hummingbird with a bold white tail and faint greenish back sheen. Brazil's dark outlier in a family of jewels.

Population: Unknown/not numerically quantified by IUCN/BirdLife; described qualitatively as fairly common, with population trend assessed as decreasing (linked to ~7.9% tree-cover loss across its range over the past decade)
Habitat: Subtropical/tropical moist lowland and montane forest, woodland edges, coffee/cacao plantations, and gardens; also degraded forest and rural/urban areas; sea level to ~1,400 m elevation
Fun fact: The Black Jacobin can sing at frequencies above 10 kHz, near the upper edge of human hearing and unusually high-pitched for a bird.
Range: Southeastern Brazil (Bahia to Rio Grande do Sul), eastern Uruguay, southeastern Paraguay, and northeastern Argentina (extent of occurrence ~1,790,000 km²); BirdLife's per-country occurrence codes list all four range states as "resident," but its own ecology classification labels the species a migrant, and independent sources describe a southward movement in the austral winter (with some birds wintering in Brazil's cerrado) — i.e., an intra-range seasonal migrant rather than a species that vacates any range country entirely
Diet: Nectar from flowers and bromeliads, supplemented with small insects caught in flight or gleaned from foliage and spider webs
Size: 0.125 m
Lifespan: 10 years

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