The appearance of a male Garden Emerald (Chlorostilbon assimilis) at neighbour Sue Magree’s house in nearby San Rafael de Santa Cruz adds another hummingbird species to the list of those found in My Patch. I have previously seen this species on the other side of Turrialba at Pavones but never in our immediate area here on the Turrialba Volcano slope. Many thanks to John Beer for both the discovery and the photos!

Garden Emerald, the white thigh tufts seen here are typical but not always obvious

Here’s a front view:

The male Garden Emerald has glittery green underparts

This is a quite small hummingbird, measuring only a little over 3 inches and is generally dominated by other species. It seems that John was lucky to get the photographs since there are numerous aggressive White-necked Jacobins (Florisuga mellivora) in Sue’s garden. Here’s a shot of a male of this common but beautiful species:

Male White-necked Jacobin at San Rafael, courtesy of John Beer

The female jacobin looks quite different:

The female White-necked Jacobin has no white on the neck but shows a spotty throat! 

The actual purpose of John’s visit was to photograph another hummingbird, the Brown Violetear (Colibri delphinae),  a denizen of middle elevations that has now reappeared at Sue’s feeders:

Brown Violetear, rather drab plumage and here the pretty violet ear patch is barely in view.

Here’s John’s final shot of the Garden Emerald showing the all-green back and bluish tail:

Here we see why the Garden Emerald and the similar but red-billed Canivet’s Emerald were once called Fork-tailed Emerald.

We have not yet found a female of this species at San Rafael but we live in hope!