Loten's Sunbird

Identification

Loten's sunbirds are small, only 12–13 cm long. The long bill separates this from the syntopic purple sunbird. The wings are browner and the maroon breast band is visible on the male under good lighting conditions. The males have pectoral tufts of yellow mixed with crimson that are used in displays. The adult male is mainly glossy purple with a grey-brown belly. The female has yellow-grey upperparts and yellowish underparts, but lacks the purple's faint supercilium. The call is distinctive buzzy zwick zwick and they are also very active often bobbing their head while foraging. They long down-curved bills and brush-tipped tubular tongues, are adaptations to their nectar feeding. The bill lengths vary across populations with the longest bills are found on the east of Peninsular India and in Sri Lanka. The song of the male is a long repeated wue-wue-wue... with the last notes accelerated. The song has been likened to the call of the cinereous tit. The males may sing from the tops of bare trees or telegraph wires.<p>The male in winter has an eclipse plumage with a yellowish underside resembling that of the female but having a broad central streak of dark metallic violet from the chin to the belly. The existence of an eclipse plumage in the adult male has been questioned by Rasmussen &amp; Anderton (2005) due to the lack of specimens in evidence. Jerdon noted however that:<p>A specimen in the Museum As. Soc., Calcutta, has the winter or currucaria plumage of the last, viz., a central glossy green stripe on the throat and breast, and a spot on the shoulders of the wings; otherwise as in the female. I do not recollect seeing the bird in this plumage in Malabar, where I had many opportunities of observing it, and rather think that it must have been a young bird.

Taxonomy

The name of the bird commemorates Joan Gideon Loten, the Dutch governor to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) who commissioned the artist Pieter Cornelis de Bevere to illustrate the natural history of the region from living and collected specimens. The plates by de Bevere included illustrations of many bird species and when Loten went back to England, he loaned these to various naturalists including George Edwards (1694–1773) who used them his Gleanings of Natural History. Carl Linnaeus described this species under the genus Certhia based on material obtained from Loten.<p>... described by Linnaeus in the Syst. Naturae, from specimens sent to him by General Loten, Governor of Ceylon, and named in honour of that gentleman, "Habitat in Zeylona. J. G. Loten p. m. Gubernat. Zeylon. qui hortum Botanicum primus in India condidit et tot raris avibus me aliosque dotavit."<p>Gmelin confused this with African species and many publications of that time include inaccurate information:<p>Certhia Lotenia, or Loten's creeper, is a native of Ceylon and Madagascar. It builds its nest of the down of plants, and is subjected to the hostility of a spider in those countries, nearly as large as itself, which pursues it with extreme ardour, and delights in sucking the blood of its young.

Scientific name

Cinnyris lotenius

Authority

(Linnaeus, 1766)

Order

Passeriformes

Family

Nectariniidae

Genus

Cinnyris

Range and habitat

Found only in peninsular India and Sri Lanka. The main region is along the Western Ghats and into the southern peninsula. There are scattered records from central India and into the northern Eastern Ghats north until Orissa. Race hindustanicus, southern Peninsular populations of which have a slightly shorter bill, is found in India while the nominate race is found in Sri Lanka. They are locally common in both forests, cultivation. They are also common in urban gardens and in some areas such as the city of Madras, they are commoner than other sunbirds.

Migration

Resident species

Behavior

Migration pattern: Resident species.

Conservation

Population trend: stable.

Population trend

stable