Fire-throated Flowerpecker
Dicaeum luzoniense
Tiny songbird of montane forests in the Philippines, where it is found on Luzon, Mindanao, and the Western Visayas. Adult male is dark blue above and pale creamy white below, with a black stripe leading down the belly from a brilliantly red patch like a bloodstain on the breast and lower throat. Female is much plainer, brownish-olive above and pale buff below; compare with Pygmy Flowerpecker, which has a bicolored and more slender downcurved bill. Often forages at flowers blooming in the canopy. Gives a thin, high-pitched “tsee’ee”, as well as a short, high-pitched series with a similar cadence. Formerly treated as a subspecies of Fire-breasted Flowerpecker.
Taxonomy
The fire-throated flowerpecker was formally described in 1894 by the Scottish ornithologist William Robert Ogilvie-Grant based on specimens collected by the zoologist and explorer John Whitehead in the mountains of northern Luzon in the Philippines. Ogilvie-Grant coined the binomial name Dicaeum luzoniense. The fire-throated flowerpecker was formerly considered to be a subspecies of the fire-breasted flowerpecker (Dicaeum ignipectus) but based on the substantial differences in plumage, it is now treated as a separate species. It is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.<p>Three subspecies are recognised:
- Scientific name
- Dicaeum luzoniense
- Authority
- Ogilvie-Grant, 1894
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Dicaeidae
- Genus
- Dicaeum
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Conservation
- Population trend
- stable
Photos
Distribution
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