Females have bright metallic golden green upperparts with a similar wing "patch" as the male's.

[5][6] The white-tailed hummingbird is found on the Pacific slope of the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero and slightly into western Oaxaca.

It inhabits the edges and interior of humid montane, semi-deciduous, and pine-oak forest, and plantations.

It apparently requires intact forest and is not found in shade coffee plantations.

[5] The white-tailed hummingbird forages for nectar at all levels of the forest from the understory to the canopy.

[5] The white-tailed hummingbird's song has been described as "a high, rapid, slightly liquid to squeaky warbling".

One call is "a liquid to slightly buzzy, rolled chip, often run into rattled trills".