All species › Swifts › Hummingbirds › Cinnamon-throated Hermit
Cinnamon-throated Hermit | Phaethornis nattereri
Natterers heremietkolibrie | Ermitaño de Natterer | Besourão-de-sobre-amarelo
The Cinnamon-throated Hermit is a small, warmly coloured hermit of the drier forests and savannas of eastern Bolivia and central Brazil. Its scientific name honours the Austrian collector Johann Natterer. In the guide area it occurs only in the far east of Bolivia.
Voice
The song is a series of high, squeaky notes, repeated at regular intervals from a low perch. The call is a high tseep.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11 cm, with a decurved bill and a yellow lower mandible. The upperparts are bronzy green, and the rump is rufous to ochre. The throat and underparts are warm cinnamon to ochre. A dark mask is bordered by a buff supercilium. The tail is wedge-shaped, with buff to whitish tips and slightly elongated central feathers. Male and female differ little.
Confusion species
Buff-bellied Hermit Phaethornis subochraceus is larger, with duller, buff underparts and distinctly white-tipped tail feathers, and lives in the same part of Bolivia. Reddish Hermit Phaethornis ruber is smaller, with more strongly rufous underparts, and lives mainly in humid Amazonian forest. Planalto Hermit Phaethornis pretrei is larger, with a long, white-tipped tail.
Habitat
Understorey of dry and semi-deciduous forest, gallery forest, scrub and forest edges in cerrado and Chiquitano regions, in the lowlands. It visits small tubular flowers in the understorey and takes small arthropods. As in related species, the nest hangs from the underside of a leaf tip.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Bolivia only in the far east, in eastern Santa Cruz and adjacent Beni. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in south-western and central Brazil, with a separate population in north-eastern Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In gallery forest and dry forest in eastern Santa Cruz, for example in the Chiquitano region and around Noel Kempff Mercado. Listen for the squeaking low in the understorey and watch for visits to flowering plants along forest edges.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Conversion of dry forest and cerrado to farmland affects its habitat locally.
Scientific name
Phaethornis nattereri | Berlepsch, 1887
Berlepsch described the species in 1887 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Phaethornis was introduced in 1827 by Swainson. The genus name combines Ancient Greek phaethōn, 'sun', with ornis, 'bird'. The species name honours Johann Natterer (1787–1843), an Austrian naturalist who collected in Brazil from 1817 to 1835. The specimen the first description was based on came from Caiçara and Engenho do Gama, Mato Grosso, Brazil.