Trochilus polytmus
Silhouette: Ferran Sayol · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~90% in a week >90%
The red-billed streamertail (Trochilus polytmus), also known as the doctor bird, or swallow tail hummingbird, is a species of hummingbird in the "emeralds", tribe Trochilini of the subfamily Trochilinae. It is endemic to Jamaica and is the national bird of the country.
The red-billed streamertail was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Trochilus polytmus. Linnaeus quoted the description in Latin by the Irish physician Patrick Browne in his The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica which had been published two years earlier in 1756. The specific epithet polytmus is from the Ancient Greek polutimos meaning "costly" or "valuable".
The International Ornithological Committee (IOC), BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World, and the Clements taxonomy treat the red-billed streamertail and black-billed streamertail (T. scitulus) as separate species. However, the North American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society calls T. polytmus "streamertail" and assign the red-billed and black-billed forms to it as subspecies. The... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park | 🇯🇲 Jamaica |
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Butterfly World | 🇺🇸 United States |
Likely
About 60% of wildlife watchers report a Streamertail sighting in Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park on a given day, based on 967 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 23rd most-seen of the 91 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 90%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
April
In that month about 70% of wildlife watchers report a Streamertail in Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park on a given day, against about 40% in May and August, the lowest months. June has too few records to rate.
Between 10 am and 1 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Streamertail sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park, in our data
Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Streamertail sightings: about 60% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Streamertail is recorded against all the birds logged in Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park (967 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
