Jasper Engel, age 11, of St. Louis, Missouri, for his question:

What is the bird family of the velvet purple coronet?

Andy had the dickens of a time tracking down this little fella. He was not on the official list of birds who visit or live in North America. Our friends at the Audubon Society could find no trace of him at all not at first. Andy was just about to give up when one of these friends came through with an urgent message. The velvet purple coronet had been located, living quietly in Colombia, South America. Colombia's high mountains and steep, wooded slopes provide homes for the largest collection of beautiful birds in any country in the world.

And our velvet purple coronet is one of the most beautiful. However, he is a hummingbird and hence a very small sized beauty. He belongs with about 400 other hummingbirds in the family Trochilidae. His genus and species names are Boissonneauaiardini. Of all the world's hummingbirds, about 131 of them are permanent residents of Colombia which means that this land in the lofty Andes has more than its fair share of the gaudy little birds.