Not All Hummingbirds are “Hummingbirds”

What? Is the title of this post some kind of trick question? Yes, I suppose it is because after all, every hummingbird species is in the family Trochilidae and thus, by definition, a “hummingbird”. At the same time, many members of this family do not have “hummingbird” as part of their common names.

For example, in Costa Rica and Panama, we have a jacobin, a fairy, coquettes, a woodnymph, a lancebill, hermits, and they are all hummingbirds.

Therefore, these birds do not show when using the search by name function on our birding apps for Costa Rica and Panama. All of the species with “hummingbird” in their name will show up as soon as you type “humm” but the others won’t.

So how can you see all of the hummingbirds listed together?

There are three quick ways to do this; one is by using the group page to look at the hummingbirds (scroll down or touch “hummingbirds” on the right side of the screen). Another way is by looking at the family page and touching “hummingbirds” on the right side of the screen. The families are listed in the same order as a typical field guide for birds.

If you feel like using the search filter, you can also touch “group”, scroll down to TROCHILIDAE or “hummingbirds”, and touch “done”. This will show all hummingbird species on the app. If you are birding in the highlands and want to only see the highland hummingbirds, you can filter for “region”- highlands in addition to filtering for “group”. Of course, you can also filter those hummingbird further by color, head pattern, and status (whether they are common, uncommon, rare, etc.).

If  you don’t have the Costa Rica Birds Field Guide app or the Panama Birds Field Guide app, see how easy it is to use them by downloading the lite versions for free.