Discosura longicaudus
Silhouette: Andy Wilson · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~60%
The racket-tipped thorntail, formerly called racket-tailed coquette, (Discosura longicaudus) is a species of hummingbird in subfamily lesbiinae of family Trochilidae. It is found in Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela.
The racket-tipped thorntail was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other hummingbirds in the genus Trochilus and coined the binomial name Trochilus longicaudus. Gmelin based his description on the "L'oiseau-mouche à raquettes" that had been described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1779 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. Buffon did not specify the origin of his specimen but in 1902 Hans von Berlepsch and Ernst Hartert designated the type locality as Cayenne, French Guiana. The racket-tipped thorntail is now placed with four other hummingbirds in the genus Discosura that was introduced in 1850 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte. Formerly, some ornithologists erroneously used the binomial name Discosura longicauda instead of Discosura longicaudus... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brownsberg Nature Park | 🇸🇷 Suriname |
More parks will be added in future updates.
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Racket-tailed Coquette sighting in Brownsberg Nature Park on a given day, based on 27 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 120th most-seen of the 221 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 30%, and over a week to about 60%, if each day is a fresh chance.
November
In that month about 40% of wildlife watchers report a Racket-tailed Coquette in Brownsberg Nature Park on a given day, against under 5% in January, April, August and October, the lowest months. May to July have too few records to rate.
Between 2 and 5 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Racket-tailed Coquette sightings with a recorded time, and nearly all of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Brownsberg Nature Park, in our data
Brownsberg Nature Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Racket-tailed Coquette sightings: about 10% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same family: Trochilidae
The closest relatives of the Racket-tailed Coquette that you can see in Brownsberg Nature Park (family Trochilidae, Hummingbirds) are Eastern Long-tailed Hermit (about 60%), Fork-tailed Woodnymph (about 60%) and Straight-billed Hermit (about 50%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Racket-tailed Coquette is recorded against all the birds logged in Brownsberg Nature Park (27 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.
