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Green-bellied Hummingbird | Saucerottia viridigaster
Groenbuikamazilia | Amazilia colimorada | Beija-flor-de-barriga-verde
The Green-bellied Hummingbird is a medium-sized hummingbird of the lower slopes on the east side of the Eastern Andes in Colombia and of western Venezuela. It is mainly dark green, with a blue to violet-blue tail and a greyish-brown vent. It lives in semi-open country, forest edges and plantations.
Voice
The song is a short, thin phrase repeated a few times. Calls are a short, high, buzzy note and a fast, stuttering, descending series.
Recording: GABRIEL LEITE — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
8–10 cm, with a straight, medium-length, blackish bill with a pink to reddish base to the lower mandible. The male has a dull golden-green head and back, an olive-green to brownish rump, sometimes with a purple tinge, dark glossy green underparts that turn greyish brown towards the vent, greyish-brown undertail coverts with paler edges and a deep blue to violet-blue tail. The female resembles the male, with white fringes to the throat feathers and bronze or brownish edges to the tail feathers. Young birds have greyish-brown underparts.
Confusion species
Indigo-capped Hummingbird Saucerottia cyanifrons has an indigo-blue crown in the male, glittering golden-green underparts and a steel-blue tail, and lives mainly in the Magdalena valley. Steely-vented Hummingbird Saucerottia saucerottei has steel-blue undertail coverts and a blue-black tail. Rufous-tailed Hummingbird Amazilia tzacatl has a rufous tail and a mostly red bill. Glittering-throated Emerald Chionomesa fimbriata has a white central stripe down the belly.
Habitat
Semi-open to open country on the lower and middle slopes, roughly from 400 to 1700 m: edges of gallery forest, plantations, scrub, low secondary forest and shrubby riverbanks; locally at the edge of the llanos. It stays in the same area all year, but locally follows the flowering of food plants. It takes nectar from flowers and catches small insects. The only nest described was a cup of buffy seed down with lichen on the outside, on a horizontal branch.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia on the eastern slope of the Eastern Andes, from Norte de Santander and Arauca through Boyacá and Casanare to Cundinamarca and Meta; a few records further south. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in the Andes of western Venezuela.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Look at flowering shrubs and trees along roads and forest edges at the foot of the Andes around Villavicencio (Meta) and in the foothills of Casanare and Boyacá.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species occurs in man-made landscapes with shrubs and trees.
Scientific name
Saucerottia viridigaster | (Bourcier, 1843)
Bourcier described the species in 1843 as Trochilus viridigaster; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Saucerottia was introduced in 1850 by Bonaparte. The genus name is taken from the specific epithet saucerrottei of the Steely-vented Hummingbird, honouring the French physician and ornithologist Antoine Constant Saucerotte. The specific name comes from Latin viridis, 'green', and Greek gastēr, 'belly'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Fusagasugá, Colombia.