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  Profile

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  In flight

Hummingbirds

Booted Racket-tail

Ocreatus underwoodii

• rare
• 56 km/h
• Least Concern

Tiny Andean hummingbird with fluffy white leg puffs and two bare wire tail-shafts ending in blue-black disc tips.

Population

Not numerically quantified; BirdLife/IUCN describes the species as "fairly common" overall, with a currently decreasing population trend (tree cover loss ~2.3% over the past decade within range, suggesting a possible 1-19% decline)

Habitat

Humid montane/cloud forest edges, secondary growth, and clearings in the Andes, mainly at 850–3,000 m elevation (occasionally 600–4,000 m); high forest dependency, classified as an altitudinal migrant

Fun fact

Adult male Booted Racket-tails carry a pair of elongated, bare-shafted tail feathers tipped with oval "rackets" and fluffy white or rufous-buff leg feathers ("boots") — a combination of ornaments found in no other hummingbird genus.

Range

Andean South America: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia (extent of occurrence ~3.64 million km², per BirdLife/IUCN lumped taxonomy)

Diet

Nectar from small tubular (often red) flowers, supplemented with small insects and spiders caught by hawking, especially during breeding for protein

Size

0.14 m

Lifespan

6 years