The red-billed streamertail (Trochilus polytmus), also known as the doctor bird, scissor-tail or scissors tail hummingbird, is a species of hummingbird in the "emeralds", tribe Trochilini of subfamily Trochilinae. It is endemic to Jamaica and is the national bird of the country.
Taxonomy and systematics
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 two species (or subspecies) interbreed in their narrow contact zone.
The species as defined by the IOC is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
Status
The IUCN has assessed the red-billed streamertail as being of Least Concern. It has a very large range but its population size and trend are not known. No immediate threats have been identified.