The Story
On June 24, 2017, I photographed this Buff-tailed Coronet (Boissonneaua flavescens) at the Río Blanco reserve near Manizales, Caldas, Colombia. It lives in humid montane forest and cloud forest between about 2,000 and 3,500 meters. It is highly territorial, though it may share a flowering tree with other hummingbirds. It is a hummingbird of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, with a buff tail and cinnamon underwings that show in flight. Río Blanco lies between 2,150 and 3,700 meters above sea level, with an average temperature of 11°C and about 90 percent humidity.
I used a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM for this one, at 1/1000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1000. IUCN lists the Buff-tailed Coronet as Least Concern with a decreasing population, and BirdLife International lists Río Blanco as an Important Bird Area, protected because its forest supplies about a third of the drinking water of Manizales.
©2018 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Buff-tailed Coronet (Boissonneaua flavescens) belongs to the family Trochilidae (Hummingbirds) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2025), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List