All species › Passerines › Tanagers and allies › Shining Honeycreeper
Shining Honeycreeper | Cyanerpes lucidus
Geelpootsuikervogel | Mielero brillante | Saí-brilhante
The Shining Honeycreeper is a honeycreeper of Central America that just reaches the far north-west of Colombia. In the guide area it is rare and known only from the border area with Panama in the Chocó. The male is bright azure-blue with a black throat and bright yellow legs.
Voice
Gives thin, high tseet notes and a dry, nasal chatter.
Recording: Johan Chaves — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
10 cm, with a long, curved black bill. The male is bright azure-blue, with black lores, a fairly large black throat patch and black wings and tail; the legs are bright yellow. The female is green, with a blue-grey tinged head, an ochre throat and a blue-streaked breast; the legs are greyish green to dull yellow. Juveniles resemble the female.
Confusion species
Purple Honeycreeper Cyanerpes caeruleus is very similar: the male is a deeper purplish blue with a smaller black throat, the female has an ochre head with a blue malar stripe and a green, yellow-streaked breast instead of a blue-streaked one. Red-legged Honeycreeper Cyanerpes cyaneus has a turquoise crown, a black back and red legs.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of humid lowland and foothill forest, also tall secondary forest and trees in clearings. It eats nectar, small fruits and insects, and often travels with canopy mixed flocks. The nest is a small cup in a tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In the guide area only rare in the far north-west of Colombia, in the Chocó on the border with Panama, where it probably occurs in small numbers; not known from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia or the Galápagos. Outside the guide area from southern Mexico through Central America to eastern Panama.
How and when to look
A honeycreeper with bright yellow legs in the north-western Chocó deserves careful documentation with photographs; compare it above all with Purple Honeycreeper, which is much more common there.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Fairly common within its range in Central America; in the guide area only at the edge of its range.
Scientific name
Cyanerpes lucidus | (Sclater & Salvin, 1859)
Sclater & Salvin described the species in 1859 as Coereba lucida; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Cyanerpes was introduced in 1899 by Oberholser. The genus name combines Greek kuanos, 'dark blue', and herpēs, 'creeper'. The species name is Latin lucidus, 'shining'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Guatemala.