Green Honeycreeper
Chlorophanes spiza
Very attractive small tanager of humid tropical lowlands. Found in humid evergreen forest edges, plantations, and gardens; at times with mixed-species feeding flocks of honeycreepers and euphonias. Often in pairs, feeding at all levels in fruiting trees and bushes. Note the short, curved bill. Males are a unique green-blue color with black hood and a banana yellow beak. Female resembles female Red-legged Honeycreeper but is larger, brighter, uniform green, with yellow lower bill and grayish legs.
Identification
The green honeycreeper is 13–14 cm (5.1–5.5 in) long and weighs 14 to 23 grams (0.49 to 0.81 oz), averaging about 19 grams (0.67 oz). It has a long decurved bill. The male is mainly blue-tinged green with a black head and a mostly bright yellow bill. The female green honeycreeper is grass-green, paler on the throat, and lacks the male's iridescence and black head. Immatures are plumaged similar to females. The call is a sharp chip.
Taxonomy
The green honeycreeper was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under its current binomial name Motacilla spiza. He specified the type locality as Suriname. The specific epithet is the Ancient Greek word for a common finch. Linnaeus based his description on the "green black-cap fly-catcher" that the English naturalist George Edwards had described and illustrated in his 1743 book A Natural History of Uncommon Birds. In 1853 the German naturalist Ludwig Reichenbach erected the genus Chlorophanes to accommodate the green honeycreeper. The name combines the Ancient Greek khlōros meaning green with -phanēs meaning showing. A comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study of the tanager family Thraupidae published in 2014 found that the green honeycreeper and the golden-collared honeycreeper (Iridophanes pulcherrimus) were sister species.<p>Seven subspecies are recognised:<p>The purplish honeycreeper (Chlorophanes purpurascens), a bird from Venezuela known only from the type specimen, is now thought to be an intergeneric hybrid between the green honeycreeper and either the red-legged honeycreeper or the blue dacnis.
- Scientific name
- Chlorophanes spiza
- Authority
- (Linnaeus, 1758)
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Thraupidae
- Genus
- Chlorophanes
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
This is a forest canopy species. The female green honeycreeper builds a small cup nest in a tree, and incubates the clutch of two brown-blotched white eggs for 13 days. It is less heavily dependent on nectar than the other honeycreepers, fruit and seeds being its main food (60%), with nectar (20%) and insects (15%) as less important components of its diet.
Conservation
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
Other Birds
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Fairly large and distinctive woodcreeper. Much more boldly marked than any other woodcreeper in range: obvious thick white streaking above and below. Found singly or in pairs, usually in forest, where you might see it hitching up the lower part of a tree trunk. Often follows mixed-species flocks. Listen for voice, a clear descending series of notes, usually stuttered at the beginning.
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Small and distinctive warbler-like bird, often difficult to see well. The male has a black head with contrasting white eyebrows and throat, gray upperparts, and striking pinkish-red underparts. The female has a buffy face, chest, and undertail coverts, whitish belly, and gray upperparts. Prefers canopy vine tangles and river edges, where it may occur lower; creeps through vegetation, alone or with mixed-species flocks, feeding on insects. Generally uncommon and inconspicuous. Plumage is unlike any other species in range. Song is a series of soft, rising whistles.
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