Canivet's emerald


Canivet's emerald or the fork-tailed emerald, is a species of hummingbird in the family Trochilidae. It is found in Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forest, subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest, and heavily degraded former forest.
The common name and Latin binomial commemorate the French ornithologist Emmanuel Canivet de Carentan.

Description

Canivet's emerald grows to a length of and weighs. The male is metallic green with a forked blue-black tail. The female is green above and grey below, with a dark eye mask topped by a white stripe behind the eye. They are virtually identical to the garden emerald, with the exception of bill colour; Garden has an entirely black bill while Canivet's has a red-based bill with a black tip. The two species have no overlap in their ranges.

Taxonomy

The subspecies C. c. salvini, which occupies the southern part of the range from extreme south of Mexico to Costa Rica, is sometimes split as Salvin's emerald.