Broad-tailed HUMMINGBIRD (Selasphorus platycercus)
The Broad-tailed Hummingbird reaches the northern limit of its range in Montana. Among the breeding hummingbirds in the state, it is the largest in size and the one for which the least is known about distribution and status. An adult male is easily recognized by its rose-colored gorget, whitish markings around the eye, and long tail. The loud wing whistle that males produce in flight is distinctive, but male Rufous Hummingbirds also produce a wing whistle, so identification of the two species solely on the basis of wing whistles is difficult unless the observer is familiar with the sounds made by both species. Broadtails are the typical nesting hummingbirds of higher elevations in the Rocky Mts. and Great Basin. They breed from c. Idaho, s. Montana, and n. Wyoming south through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, w. Texas, and the highlands of Mexico to Guatemala and winter in most of their range south of the U.S. Like many other species of western hummingbirds, winter records have increased in recent years along the Gulf coast in the se. U.S.
Status and Occurrence: Thought to be an uncommon breeding resident in Carbon and Madison Cos. and perhaps in Beaverhead Co. at Red Rock Lakes NWR and in the Centennial Mts., but no nests have been found. Near Red Lodge from 2001 to 2007, Ned and Gigi Batchelder banded 14 females with oviducal eggs in late spring and caught several juveniles in midsummer that may have been raised locally. The species typically arrives from mid-May to early Jun and leaves by mid-Aug. The earliest record was an adult male seen at Red Lodge by Janet Gale on 7 May 2007, and the latest was of two juvenile males banded near Red Lodge by the Batchelders on 5 Sep 2003.
Many Broad-tailed Hummingbirds have been reported from the western half of the state, usually by observers who provided no details (notes of P. D. Skaar). Some of the birds were identified by sound alone and probably were Rufous Hummingbirds. Skaar was skeptical of most of these reports, and rightly so. Outside of Carbon Co., where the species has been documented many times, reports by experienced observers include the following: 17 Jun 1967 at St. Mary Lake by Dave Shea, 12 Jul 1969 in the Centennial Mts. by Allan Cruickshank, Jun 1988 and 2004 at Quake Lake by Ed Harper, 13 May 1997 at Bozeman by John Carlson, and 15 Jul 2003 at Red Rock Lakes NWR by Caleb Putnam. In addition, Bart O’Gara salvaged an adult male at his home in Missoula on 16 May 1975 (UMZM 15853), and the Batchelders banded nonbreeding adults along Canyon Ferry Res. on 5 and 16 Jun 2005 and near Painted Rocks Lake on 30 May 2007. Historical information on reports of questionable validity conveyed by Saunders (1921) is discussed below.
Habitat: No specific information for Montana. Broad-tailed Hummingbirds generally are considered to summer in higher-elevation habitats that include subalpine meadows and shrub fields adjacent to coniferous forests, and open coniferous forests near tree line. The nest is built with plant down, spider webbing, moss, and lichen and is placed on a horizontal limb, usually within 2 m of the ground and below an overhanging branch (Calder and Calder 1992). The species feeds on flower nectar and small insects. Use of montane meadows for foraging increases in late summer after the breeding season (Calder and Calder 1992).
Conservation: Potential Species of Concern in Montana because little is known about its status in the state. The BBS is wholly inadequate for determining population trends in Montana. The data suggest a significant decline in numbers of 1.0% and 0.6% per year in the southern Rockies from 1966-2009 and 1999-2009, respectively. The global population estimate is 3.8 million birds, 80% in the U.S. (Rich et al. 2004).
Historical Notes: The historical record of Broad-tailed Hummingbirds in Montana is ambiguous. Two specimens supposedly taken in Glacier Co. in 1895 by Vernon Bailey and A. H. Howell (Bailey and Bailey 1918: 163) never made it to the U.S. National Museum, where all of the other specimens taken by those collectors in that year were deposited. Another specimen, allegedly taken at Chico in 1907 by a Lieutenant Colonel Wirt Robinson (Saunders 1921: 82), also has never been found.
Saunders (1909b: 197) was shown a nest of what he took to be a Broad-tailed Hummingbird in Gallatin Canyon on 28 Jun 1909. The female had “quite a large patch of metallic color on her throat.” On 13 Aug 1909, he found a second hummingbird nest near Bozeman with two cold eggs and no female; he assumed it was another Broad-tailed nest (Saunders 1909b). He later retracted these records after concluding that the female at the first nest more likely was a Rufous (Saunders 1910d), and then backtracked again by saying “I am inclined to think the bird was correctly identified in the first place” (Saunders 1921: 83). Owing to the scarcity of Rufous Hummingbird records from Gallatin Co., Skaar (1969: 69) posited that the initial identification by Saunders “was probably correct.” Rufous Hummingbirds are now known to be reasonably common in the Gallatin Valley. Moreover, the extensive gorget that Saunders described is a common trait of a female Rufous but not of a female Broad-tailed (Jones 1993, Williamson 2001). Thus, the first nest that Saunders observed in 1909 almost surely belonged to a Rufous Hummingbird, although no modern breeding records exist for Gallatin Co.
Contemporary Work: None, aside from banding work by the Batchelders.
Banded Birds: The Batchelders banded 153 Broad-tailed Hummingbirds in Montana from 2001 to 2007. All but three were captured in Carbon Co. in the vicinity of Red Lodge, the exceptions being the aforementioned birds from Canyon Ferry Res. and Painted Rocks Lake. None has been re-encountered far from its banding site or in a year other than the one in which it was first captured.
Sponsored by Barb and Phil Jaquith, Red Lodge
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