Blue-chinned sapphire

Blue-chinned sapphire
Male C. n. notata, Trinidad
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Trochiliformes
Family: Trochilidae
Genus: Chlorestes
L. Reichenbach, 1854
Species: C. notata
Binomial name
Chlorestes notata
(Reich, 1793)
Synonyms

Chlorostilbon notatus
Chlorestes notatus

The blue-chinned sapphire (Chlorestes notata) is a hummingbird that breeds from Colombia south and east to the Guianas, Trinidad, Peru, and Brazil. There have been occasional records from Tobago. For Brazil, the species' range is along the main Amazon River Basin, as well as the coastal Atlantic Ocean, both in the northeast, as well as far south on the southeast coastal strip, (an entire coastal strip, north-east-south of about 3000 km). It is sometimes placed in the genus Chlorostilbon.

It is a bird of forests and sometimes cultivated areas with large trees. The female lays her eggs in a deep cup nest, made of lichen and other fine plant material and placed on a horizontal tree branch. Incubation is 16 days with a further 18–19 days to fledging.

The blue-chinned sapphire is 8.9 cm long and weighs 3.8 g. The bill is fairly straight, with the upper mandible black and the lower reddish. The male has mainly green plumage, darker above, with white thighs, a forked metallic blue tail and blue upper throat. The female differs from the male in that she has green-spotted white underparts.

Blue-chinned sapphires feed on insects and nectar, mainly in trees but sometimes on vines or smaller plants like Heliconia. The song is a high metallic ssooo-ssooo-ssooo.

References

External links


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, February 15, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.