Buff-bellied Hummingbird

About the Buff-bellied Hummingbird

The Buff-bellied Hummingbird is the resident hummingbird of South Texas - a medium-large, stocky hummer with a glittering emerald-green head and throat, a warm buffy-cinnamon belly, a rufous tail, and a red bill tipped in black. Both sexes look alike, which is unusual among North American hummingbirds.

It is a bird of thorn-forest edges, gardens, and feeders, aggressive toward other hummingbirds and quick to claim a sugar-water station as its own. It hovers to feed at tubular flowers like Turk's cap and shrimp plant and gleans small insects from foliage, and its calls are sharp, dry chips.

In Texas the Buff-bellied Hummingbird is a year-round resident of the Rio Grande Valley and the coastal brush country north to about Corpus Christi, with some birds wandering up the coast toward Houston in fall and winter. It reaches the United States only in Texas.