Rufous-throated Sapphire
Hylocharis sapphirina
A small hummingbird with a straight red bill with a black tip. Males have a green back with iridescent violet-blue underparts, a coppery tail, and a fluffy white vent. Females have grayish dark underparts with some dark spots on the chest. Note the rufous chin in both sexes, which can be hard to see. Mostly found in humid forests and wooded savannas.
Identification
The rufous-throated sapphire is 8.4 to 9.1 cm (3.3 to 3.6 in) long. Males weigh 4.1 to 4.5 g (0.14 to 0.16 oz) and females 3.9 to 4.3 g (0.14 to 0.15 oz). Males have a medium length, straight, coral red bill with a black tip; females' bills have less red. The species gets its English name from the males' intensely rufous chin; females' chins are a paler rufous. Adult males have dark green upperparts with coppery violet uppertail coverts. Their throat, chest, and belly are iridescent violet-blue and their undertail coverts chestnut. Their central pair of tail feathers are coppery with a violet tinge and the other four pairs chestnut with dusky gray tips. Adult females' upperparts are the same as males'. Their underparts are grayish with large glittering blue-green spots on the throat and chest and buffy undertail coverts. Their tail is like the male's with paler edges on the outer feathers. Juveniles are similar to adult females but males have richer rufous on the chin.
Taxonomy
The rufous-throated sapphire 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 sapphirinus. He gave the type locality as Guiana. Gmelin based his description on "Le saphir" that had been described in 1779 by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon and the "Sapphir humming-bird" that had been described in 1781 by the English ornithologist John Latham. The rufous-throated sapphire is now placed by most taxonomic systems with the gilded sapphire in genus Hylocharis that was introduced in 1831 by the German naturalist Friedrich Boie. However, BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World places it in genus Amazilia with the English name rufous-throated hummingbird. <p>The genus name Hylocharis combines the Ancient Greek hulē meaning "woodland" or "forest" with kharis meaning "beauty". The specific epithet is from Latin sapphirinus meaning "sapphirine" or "of sapphire". <p>The rufous-throated sapphire shares its genus with the gilded sapphire (H. chrysura) and is monotypic: no subspecies are recognized.
- Scientific name
- Hylocharis sapphirina
- Authority
- (Gmelin, JF, 1788)
- Order
- Apodiformes
- Family
- Trochilidae
- Genus
- Hylocharis
Range and habitat
The rufous-throated sapphire has three separate ranges. The largest spans from eastern Colombia east through Venezuela, the Guianas, and northern Brazil to the coast, from Colombia southwest through eastern Ecuador into northern Peru, and southwest in a wide swath from northeastern Brazil into northeastern Bolivia. Another spans from southeastern Brazil's Bahia state south to northern Paraná. The third encompasses southeastern Paraguay, northeastern Argentina, and adjacent southwestern Brazil according to the International Ornithological Committee and the Clements taxonomy. The South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society lists the species as hypothetical in Paraguay and Argentina because the records have not been documented by photographs or other tangible evidence.<p>The rufous-throated sapphire inhabits semi-open to open landscapes such as the edges of lowland forest, savanna with scattered stands of trees, clearings around rock outcrops, coffee plantations, and (rarely) open coastal vegetation. In elevation it is most numerous between 200 and 500 m (660 and 1,600 ft) but occurs as high as 1,850 m (6,100 ft).
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
Migration pattern: Resident species.
Conservation
Population trend: stable.
- Population trend
- stable
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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