#White-booted Racket-tail

[bird-identifier]

White-booted Racket-tail (Ocreatus underwoodii)

[rondaincorporated]

Hummingbird Species, Part 193

Today we look at the white-booted racket-tail, Ocreatus underwoodii. The White-Booted Racket-Tail Hummingbird, scientifically known as Ocreatus underwoodii, is a remarkable avian species found primarily in the Andean highlands of South America. This species, belonging to the family Trochilidae, is a captivating subject of study due to its unique physical features, extraordinary behavior, and its…

[abigailspinach]

[autistrix]

[https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/106523014]

White-Booted Racket-Tail || Ocreatus underwoodii

Observed in Ecuador

Least Concern in location of observation

[irradiatedsnakes]

the Big TMA Furry List

this list with commentary/choice rationale below the cut :] i wrote a lot of thoughts down do please check it out.

jon: common raven

martin: tan jumping spider

sasha: southern flannel moth

not!sasha: red postman

tim: jackson's chameleon

melanie: eastern copperhead

georgie: triceratops horridus

basira: domestic cat (calico shorthair)

daisy: domestic dog (german shepherd)

elias: barn owl. jonah: eurasian eagle owl.

gerry: domestic dog (black doberman)

annabelle: white-booted racket-tail

jane: cabbage white

michael: spiny softshell turtle

helen: common hermit crab

oliver: black vulture

peter: risso's dolphin

mike: caelestiventus hanseni

jude: black kite

agnes: ???

nikola: stealing major's carousel horse

jared: american dog tick

breekon&hope: Hog and/or Bear. you get no more information

dekker: mouflon

gertrude: great tit

leitner: domestic cat (persian)

manuela: gray long-eared bat

rayner: olm

salesa: sea otter

simon: dodo

elaboration below !

jon: common raven

this was a choice i made before i even finished listening to the podcast back in 2020. jon's 1000% a bird to me, and the curious nature of corvids works well here. plus, i think a bird so universally ominous as a raven works perfectly as a horror protag :P i used to draw raven!jon with a couple troodon traits, mostly just cus it was fun, but i wanted to make my designs more grounded for this iteration. made them plantigrade, didn't get silly with body styles like i have with mp100 designs.

martin: tan jumping spider

if you've been here for a while you'll know that my furry martin has gone through about two million iterations. he started off as a european pine marten, to bold jumping spider, to chinese pangolin, to nine-banded armadillo, finally to nurse shark.

out of all of these the spider and the shark are my favorites. i wanted to go back to the jumping spider though- the design is really fun and i wasn't able to get the expressions right, but i'm more confident in my skills now and i'm having fun with the design. i may revisit nurse shark at some point. i switched from bold to tan jumper- i originally chose bold just cus they're my favorite jumper, but their stark black/white and iridescent aqua coloration just doens't work for martin. so, the tan jumper!

sasha: southern flannel moth

another old choice. species chosen because of a friend's fic, pharos by right (another i'm planning to reread now that i'm dipping my toes back into tma..)! southern flannel moths are poofy and orange, and their caterpillars are those super painful teddybear ones. i really like the design.

not!sasha: red postman

wanted to have her be another lepidopteran, and with all the many examples of mimicry among the group i thought red postman was a fun choice. doesn't look anything like a southern flannel moth, but that's sort of the point.

tim: jackson's chameleon

yet another choice from the oldtimes- most of the main characters are, i've mostly switched around the more secondary chars. first suggested, i believe, by @/ofdreamsanddoodles. i think there's something very fun about chameleons being basically a living mood ring & tim's Descent s1-3 showing physcially not just through the worm scars but through like, constant stress coloration during s3.

melanie: eastern copperhead

one of my favorite choices. i have a young copperhead specimen named after her. this one is quite vibes-based, but i do really like the copperhead as a viper that is not deadly. and i'm always a sucker for the "animal perceived as scary and violent that in actuality only strikes when under extreme stress" thing in furry assignments.

georgie: triceratops horridus

another favorite choice. visually, i really like how this works out, and trikes as a social and protective animal works well. she's literally got a shield on her face. horridus was chosen because i like the shape of the head and horns better than prorsus.

basira: domestic cat (calico shorthair)

got a little cat/dog thing going on for dasira. i like the inversion of the usual cat/dog dynamic with their unhealthy devotion instead, and visually it just works very well for them both.

daisy: domestic dog (german shepherd)

yeah i know this one's an exceedingly obvious choice.

elias: barn owl. jonah: eurasian eagle owl.

it's the institute logo! it's him! barn owl for elias specifically because of its very sleek look, designing him went fantastically. also, i can make the eagle owl's face disk work as a mimicry of ben meredith's muttonchops, which i think is a fun design bit to give to magnus.

gerry: domestic dog (black doberman)

certified gerryguy @/gerrydelano's choice. to quote a discord message from 3 years ago (sorry ron): "i feel like.........my INSTINCT is some kind of canine because like. the whole symbolism thing about being either an obedient or rabid dog. something something muzzled all your life. being a dangerous figure if people only see the silhouette but you just want scritches and nobody'll get close enough to you." black dog symbolism + breed which has ears cropped and tail docked, unecessarily molded for a Purpose which the dog has no say in

annabelle: white-booted racket-tail

sort of my original choice- she used to be part white-booted racket-tail, part anna's hummingbird. kept with the racket-tail cus it's fun and very cute. i've had a couple people express surprise that she wasn't a spider, but i think that's way too obvious. hummingbirds, though- they steal the webs of spiders to use as material to make their nests, but can sometimes become trapped in the webs and eaten by the spiders themselves. which is probably the metaphor-via-fursona-assignment i'm most proud of in this whole list

jane: cabbage white

the cabbage white is a butterfly whose caterpillars are routinely parasitized by the parasitoid wasp the white butterfly parasite. in case you're not familiar, parasitoid wasps lay their eggs on (usually) caterpillars, which hatch on the still-living caterpillar, devouring it from the inside before eventually emerging from the consumed husk of the host. also, i really liked the image of parasitoid wasp larvae emerging from an adult butterfly, rather than a caterpillar.

michael: spiny softshell turtle

for michael and helen, i wanted to choose animals which were, in some way, their own home. turtle is an obvious choice- and spiny softshells are a favorite of mine, and sufficiently strange-looking.

helen: common hermit crab

see previous entry. also please google "hermit crab without shell"

oliver: black vulture

bit of an obvious choice, but i adore vultures so i had to. black vulture chosen because i think the monochrome color scheme + straighter face work better than a turkey vulture for him

peter: risso's dolphin

i really like the idea of a cetacean for peter and the lukases as a whole, a famously social animal for the seemingly contradictory nature of this lonely-but-huge family, plus with so many cetaceans being endangered getting that lonely angle (risso's specifically are not, though, as peter is lonely through his own choice, not by circumstance).

mike: caelestiventus hanseni

it's a dimorphodont. he feels like a pterosaur to me, and i like the idea of a vast avatar as a usually short-flying arboreal species, for the unnaturality/contrast of it.

jude: black kite

black kites are one of the species of kites known to intentionally spread fires by picking up burning sticks to flush out prey.

agnes: ???

the only one i'm still undecided on. will update.

nikola: stealing major's carousel horse

i can't top that

jared: american dog tick

great choice from @/magnusarchivememes. Takes Your Blood And Gets So Big

breekon&hope: Hog and/or Bear. you get no more information

vaguely russian animals that are large and imposing but remain somewhat generic. which is the hog and which is the bear is not consistent.

dekker: mouflon

dekker has very much mammal vibes to me. the mouflon is a neat species of wild sheep. i think the noble, imposing but kind image of the ram works well for dekker as that sort of true-good hero figure, and mouflons in particular are very nice looking with good shapes. the statement giver in distant cousin describes dekker as "though he was slightly shorter than I was, it seemed like he towered over me." which i think this sheep works well with.

gertrude: great tit

i wanted all the main eye avatars as birds, just like how i give them all glasses. just a fun little treat for me. great tit was chosen for gertrude as a kind of classic british bird, and as tits in general are VERY fiesty despite their round and adorable appearance. i really like this image of a great tit posing with a dead mouse like it's a hunter with a trophy deer. the cheek markings also work really well to bring to mind the image of old person jowls.

leitner: domestic cat (persian)

vibes. also i like the idea of him as a spoiled domestic animal. if i remember correctly, this was also @/ofdreamsanddoodles' suggestion

manuela: gray long-eared bat

she's a bat. what's to say. WELL actually okay there's the perception of bats as blind but actually having quite good vision which i think meshes in a fun way with the dark, and the way manuela does her sciency stuff.

rayner: olm

i mean, yeah

salesa: sea otter

largely design-oriented, suitably scruffy. ocean animal with strong social bonds, it was a slam dunk soon as i thought of it.

simon: dodo

how couldn't i, come on.

[herpsandbirds]

White-booted Racket-tails (Ocreatus underwoodii), male, family Trochilidae, Ecuador

photograph by Nick Athanas

[whatsthebird]

What's the Bird?

Location: Mindo, Ecuador

Date: January

We ask that discussion under questions be limited to how you came to your conclusion, not what your conclusion was.

Happy Birding!

Keep the game alive! Submit a bird HERE

Bird - 70 graciously submitted by Anon

[arthistoryanimalia]

For #NationalHummingbirdDay:

Ernst Haeckel (German, 1834-1919)

“Trochilidae - Kolibris (Hummingbirds)”, chromolithograph, Pl. 99 in Kunstformen der Natur (1899-1904).

Biodiversity Heritage Library

1. Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird

2. Male Horned Sungem

3. Male Crimson Topaz

4. Male Red-tailed Comet

5. Male Tufted Coquette

6. Male Sword-billed Hummingbird

7. Buff-tailed Sicklebill

8. Male Dot-eared Coquette

9. Male White-vented Violetear

10. Male Hooded Visorbearer

11. Female Juan Fernández Firecrown

12. Male Booted Racket-tail

[kvetchlandia]

Bruce Rosenstiel White-booted Racket-tail Hummingbird (Ocreatus underwoodii), Sachatamia, Ecuador 2018

[supremebirdbracket]

Apodiformes Bracket Matchups

Now that the Shorebirds Bracket is over (congrats to the little auk!), I'll be setting up the Apodiformes bracket, created from your submissions! The first-round matchups will be:

Bumblebee hummingbird vs Bee hummingbird

Broad-tailed hummingbird vs Rufous hummingbird

Calliope hummingbird vs Vervain hummingbird

Costa’s hummingbird vs Anna’s hummingbird

Ruby-throated hummingbird vs Red-tailed comet

Black-tailed trainbearer vs Long-tailed sylph

Hispaniolan mango vs Black-throated mango

Horned sungem vs Purple-throated carib

White-booted racket-tail vs Sword-billed hummingbird

Glowing puffleg vs Rainbow starfrontlet

Violet sabrewing vs Crowned woodnymph

Red-billed streamertail vs Black-bellied hummingbird

Purple-throated mountaingem vs Fiery-throated hummingbird

Bohm’s spinetail vs Chestnut-collared swift

Common swift vs Chimney swift

Whiskered treeswift vs Crested treeswift

I'm not certain when I'll be finished making the visuals and fact blurbs, but I'll make an announcement when I am. In the meantime, I will be opening up the submissions form for our bracket after this, which will be a sort of sequel: non-Apodiformes Strisores birds, abbreviated to "Other Strisores." This includes nightjars, owlet-nightjars, oilbirds, potoos, and frogmouths.

Here is the link

[simplegenius042]

FC5 Silva Omar Aesthetics

Bold - YES

Italics - Somewhat

HOLLAND VALLEY.

red, gold, and orange leaves against a clear blue sky // rows of apple trees in an orchard // pick your own pumpkin patches // baskets of puppies // a sleeping fawn hidden away from predators // pumpkin spice // the bite of apple cider // a harvest festival // the faint smell of a bonfire on the wind // the slight unease of getting lost in a corn maze // a hint of fall in the air when it’s still warm // golden sunsets // leaves just beginning to turn from green to orange // the rumble of a tractor // the buzz of an airplane flying low overhead // golden wheat swaying in the wind // the smell of gasoline // sprawling river deltas // crystal clear water // an old wooden dresser // family heirlooms // jingling keys // crimson blood // dark ink on parchment // the sting of a bruise // the warmth of a grand fireplace // gunmetal // work boots in the mud // cattails // the harsh cry of crows // the faint musty smell of taxidermy animals // farm animals making a racket // open air farmers markets // catching your clothes on a barbed wire fence // a fresh breeze through an open window // white rocking chairs // old farmhouses // scarecrows // wild westerly winds // the barely contained excitement for the approach of autumn

WHITETAIL MOUNTAINS.

fishing at dawn // the smell of woodsmoke clinging to your clothes and hair // wolfsong // locking eyes with another predator // a night that falls faster than expected // the crisp hint of snow in the air // log cabins // the scent of evergreen trees // stone fireplaces // a well worn camouflage jacket // old field guide books// the smell of a cigarette still lingering on your hands // lager // the roar of whitewater rapids // cool dark caves // the rough wood of an antique gun // the scent of iron // woodland paths crisscrossed by gnarled tree roots // a haze of dust from a recent rockslide // losing your breath as you wade into an icy river // winding mountain roads // an eagle’s cry // the bright red flash of a foxes tail at the corner of your eye // the patter of rain on dead leaves // petrichor // seeing your breath in the cold morning air // the click of a projector // the jangling of a chain link fence // gunpowder // the sizzling of a grill // burnt hair // the grand lobby of a lodge // gravel crunching underfoot // the cry of blue jays // information boards // brochures piled on a table // cold metal bars // the sour smell of a lumber mill // the rough texture of scouting achievement badges // muffled oldies music from another room // sharpening a hunting knife // blood red leaves blooming from bone white birch trees // red bleeding into the edges of your vision

HENBANE RIVER.

cloying floral scents // the thick mist that gathers near the ground at dawn // dewdrops sparkling on spiderwebs // the almost too intense morning sun // unseasonable warmth // birdsong // honeyed wine // walking barefoot in the cool grass // the clanging of a jail cell door // spying hazy figures of animals in the fog // lemon balm and lavender // the low growl of a wildcat that you can’t see (but it sees you) // choking clouds of pollen settling on cars like snow // vineyards // faint humming and singing from an unidentifiable source // juniper berries // feeling uncomfortably hot in overly formal clothes // lace // burning incense // frogs in the reeds // soft brunette tresses // long winding rivers // mesmerizing music // glistening trout // the sweet nectar of honeysuckle flowers // rumbling of truck motors // glass beakers // bundles of dried flowers // wind chimes tinkling // rough concrete bricks // tumbling barrels // the ringing of a vintage phone // sweet words // broken promises // moonflower and datura // the smell of freshly cut grass // the faint sound of children laughing

JOSEPH’S COMPOUND.

babbling brooks // humming // whistling // dogs barking // grand oak trees // the faint sound of hymns // a crate of ripe peaches // melted wax candles // the smell of fresh newspaper clippings // caged birds singing // a warm embrace // wrought iron arches // flames reaching for the sky // gentle voices murmuring // your feet sliding in thick mud // pouring rain // vape smoke // the slight scent of sweat // ink on skin // the smell of wooden church pews // the rustle of hymnals // old book smell // slight hint of ozone from old electronics // bradford pear petals floating on the breeze

DUTCH’S ISLAND.

creaking metal hinges // the crackle of a radio // the scratch of an old record player // the smell of antiseptic // the flickering light of a projector // the feel of pushing pins into cork board // echoing footsteps // shelves stacked with canned food and mason jars // dark shadowy figures on the edge of your vision // gleaming metal badges // a table of bullet shell casings // vertigo from standing on swaying radio towers // the sound of shattering glass // whistling pipes // suffocating heat // the chatter of squirrels // faint scent of mothballs// the sputter of a boat engine // the high electronic whine of an old television turning on // the sound of distant gunfire // tear stained letters // old family photographs // the smell of a mildewy basement

[wingedjewels]

Female White Booted Racket Tail La Conchita Cali Valle Del Cauca Colombia by Adam Rainoff Via Flickr: Ocreatus underwoodii / Birdwatch La Conchita / Cali / Valle Del Cauca / Colombia

[bm2ab]

Crowd Scenes . 05 November 2024 . Haeckel Trochilidae Hummingbirds . Plate 99

Ernst Haeckel Kunstformen der Natur 1904 Trochilidae Hummingbird Illustrated Plate 99

Hummingbirds (drawn from millinery specimens, body positions are not natural) Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird Male Horned Sungem Male Crimson Topaz Male Red-tailed Comet Male Tufted Coquette Male Sword-billed Hummingbird Buff-tailed Sicklebill Male Dot-eared Coquette Male White-vented Violetear Male Hooded Visorbearer Female Juan Fernández Firecrown Male Booted Racket-tail

[ryannbosetti]

Joyas Voladoras

By Brian Doyle | June 12, 2012

*this was sent to me following a transcendental haircut hour with poet Marie Howe who initially read the essay out loud to me while I pushed her curls into a flow, misty eyes for both of us

Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird’s heart is a lot of the hummingbird. Joyas voladoras, flying jewels, the first white explorers in the Americas called them, and the white men had never seen such creatures, for hummingbirds came into the world only in the Americas, nowhere else in the universe, more than three hundred species of them whirring and zooming and nectaring in hummer time zones nine times removed from ours, their hearts hammering faster than we could clearly hear if we pressed our elephantine ears to their infinitesimal chests.

Each one visits a thousand flowers a day. They can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backwards. They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest. But when they rest they come close to death: on frigid nights, or when they are starving, they retreat into torpor, their metabolic rate slowing to a fifteenth of their normal sleep rate, their hearts sludging nearly to a halt, barely beating, and if they are not soon warmed, if they do not soon find that which is sweet, their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be. Consider for a moment those hummingbirds who did not open their eyes again today, this very day, in the Americas: bearded helmet-crests and booted racket-tails, violet-tailed sylphs and violet-capped woodnymphs, crimson topazes and purple-crowned fairies, red-tailed comets and amethyst woodstars, rainbow-bearded thornbills and glittering-bellied emeralds, velvet-purple coronets and golden-bellied star-frontlets, fiery-tailed awlbills and Andean hillstars, spatuletails and pufflegs, each the most amazing thing you have never seen, each thunderous wild heart the size of an infant’s fingernail, each mad heart silent, a brilliant music stilled.

Hummingbirds, like all flying birds but more so, have incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms. To drive those metabolisms they have race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate. Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fibers than ours. Their arteries are stiffer and more taut. They have more mitochondria in their heart muscles—anything to gulp more oxygen. Their hearts are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity and inertia, the mad search for food, the insane idea of flight. The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature. It’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine. Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.

The biggest heart in the world is inside the blue whale. It weighs more than seven tons. It’s as big as a room. It is a room, with four chambers. A child could walk around it, head high, bending only to step through the valves. The valves are as big as the swinging doors in a saloon. This house of a heart drives a creature a hundred feet long. When this creature is born it is twenty feet long and weighs four tons. It is waaaaay bigger than your car. It drinks a hundred gallons of milk from its mama every day and gains two hundred pounds a day, and when it is seven or eight years old it endures an unimaginable puberty and then it essentially disappears from human ken, for next to nothing is known of the the mating habits, travel patterns, diet, social life, language, social structure, diseases, spirituality, wars, stories, despairs and arts of the blue whale. There are perhaps ten thousand blue whales in the world, living in every ocean on earth, and of the largest animal who ever lived we know nearly nothing. But we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles.

Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers. Reptiles and turtles have hearts with three chambers. Fish have hearts with two chambers. Insects and mollusks have hearts with one chamber. Worms have hearts with one chamber, although they may have as many as eleven single-chambered hearts. Unicellular bacteria have no hearts at all; but even they have fluid eternally in motion, washing from one side of the cell to the other, swirling and whirling. No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one in the end—not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.

———

[autistrix]

[https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/106523014] White-Booted Racket-Tail || Ocreatus underwoodii Observed in Ecuador Least Concern in location of observation

[artmie-kun]

Character design assignment I did recently based on three words: hummingbird, quartz, and western!

Name: Hummington

A western bandit based on a white-booted racket tail hummingbird. Has rose quartz accents on wings and elbows for defense and close-range weapons.

Inventory: Rope, Handgun, and satchel

Is a western version of Robinhood where he steals from the rich and gives to the poor