430 BULLETIIT 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



CALOTHORAX LUCIFER (Swainson) 

 LUCIFER HUMMINGBIRD 



HABITS 



This brilliant little hummer, with its deeply forked p^orfjet of a 

 vivid violet-purple, chanj^no; to reddish purple or blue in different 

 lights, is only rarely found across our southwestern border in Ari- 

 zona and western Texas. Its main range is on the tablelands of 

 Mexico as far south as the City of Mexico, Puebla, and Chiapas. It 

 was first added to our fauna by Henry W. Henshaw (1875), who 

 took a female near Camp Bowie, Ariz., on August 8, 1874, and doubt- 

 fully recorded it as Doricha eniciira; it was later determined to be a 

 lucifer hummingbird. Some years later, in 1901, it was taken in 

 the Chisos Mountains in western Texas by a Biological Survey party. 

 It is apparently fairly common in these mountains, for Mrs. Bailey 

 (1902) says that Mr. Bailey found it "with several other specie.s 

 common in June about the big agaves, which were then in full 

 flower." Still later. Van Tyne and Sutton (1937) report the capture 

 of two specimens in this region but say that the nest has not yet 

 been found there. The lucifer hummingbird may be commoner along 

 our southwestern border than is generally known, for it somewhat 

 resembles Costa's hummingbird in size and color and might easily be 

 overlooked. 



Nesting. — Comparatively few nests of the lucifer hummingbird 

 have been found. Wm. Bullock ( 1825) , in his "Six Months in Mexico," 

 gives us the first account of it : "They breed in Mexico in June and 

 July ; and the nest is a beautiful specimen of the architectural talen of 

 these birds: it is neatly constructed with cotton, or the down of 

 thistles, to which is fastened on the outside, by some glutinous sub- 

 stance, a white flat lichen resembling ours." 



W. W. Brown collected four nests of this species in Tamaulipas, 

 Mexico, between June 15 and July 4, 1924. Three of these are now 

 in the Thayer collection in Cambridge, and one is in the Doe col- 

 lection in Gainesville, Fla. All the nests were built in shrubs and 

 only a few feet above ground; one was recorded as 4 and one 6 

 feet up. The nests were made of soft vegetable fibers and down, 

 mixed with the scales of buds, blossoms or seeds, and bits of lichen, 

 all completely covered and held in place with cobwebs or very fine 

 fibers. 



Eggs. — The lucifer hummingbird lays the usual hummingbird set 

 of two eggs, which are indistinguishable from the eggs of other hum- 

 mingbirds of similar size. The measurements of 6 eggs average 12.7 

 by 9.7 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 13.8 

 by 10.0, 12.4 by 10.1, and 12.0 by 9.2 millimeters. 



