Costa’s Hummingbirds are predominantly desert hummingbirds with striking iridescent purple throat patches that flare out and a purple crown. Their backs are green, and their bellies are white with green coloring on the sides.
Female Costa’s Hummingbirds lack the purple color and are more white on the belly.
- Length: 3.5 in ( 7.6 – 8.8 cm)
- Weight: 0.1-0.1 oz (2-3 g)
Range
Costa’s Hummingbirds are residents of Baja California, Southern California, and southwestern Arizona. They also migrate between the Pacific Coast of Mexico in winter and up into Arizona, the southern edges of Nevada and Utah, and California for breeding.
Habitat And Diet
Desert scrub, chaparral, and deciduous forest provide the habitat of Costa’s Hummingbirds, and they visit many different species of plants. They also eat small flying insects.
Costa’s Hummingbird Call:
Nests
Nests are built quite low at three to seven feet above the ground in shrubs, and they may have up to two broods in a year. Females take about 5 days to build the nest from bark, small leaves, and other material woven together with spiderweb.
They have 1 or 2 broods a year and the eggs take about seventeen days to hatch and the young take another twenty to thirty days to fledge. Females do all the incubating and raising of the young.
Fun Fact:
Costa’s hummingbirds would have to visit nearly 2000 flowers a day to give them the energy they need.
