All species › Swifts › Hummingbirds › Sooty-capped Hermit
Sooty-capped Hermit | Phaethornis augusti
Bruinkapheremietkolibrie | Ermitaño limpiacasa | Rabo-branco-de-cabeça-escura
The Sooty-capped Hermit is a large, greyish hermit of the dry and semi-humid hills and mountains of Colombia and Venezuela. It is less tied to closed forest than most hermits and also occurs in scrub, coffee plantations and gardens. The nest is often placed in a sheltered spot, under an overhanging bank or rock and sometimes on a bridge or building.
Voice
The song is a high, repeated, squeaky or chirping phrase, given from a low perch. The call is a sharp tseep.
Recording: Daniel de Jesus Garcia — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
15–16 cm, with a long, decurved bill and long, white-tipped central tail feathers. The crown is dark greyish brown. The upperparts are greenish grey, the rump and uppertail coverts distinctly cinnamon. The head has a black mask, bordered by a white supercilium and a white malar stripe. The underparts are grey. The outer tail feathers are blackish with white tips. The sexes are nearly alike.
Confusion species
Pale-bellied Hermit Phaethornis anthophilus is whitish below, without a cinnamon rump, and lives mainly in the lowlands of northern Colombia. Green Hermit Phaethornis guy is darker green and lives in humid montane forest. Tawny-bellied Hermit Phaethornis syrmatophorus is warm tawny below and lives higher in humid montane forest. Long-billed Hermit Phaethornis longirostris is greener above and paler buff below, and lives in humid lowland forest.
Habitat
Forest edges, open woodland, scrub on dry and semi-humid slopes, gallery forest, coffee plantations and gardens, mostly between about 500 and 2000 m, locally lower. It visits flowers of shrubs and herbs, also in gardens, and catches small arthropods. The cone-shaped nest hangs from a rootlet or stem in a sheltered spot.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Serranía de Perijá, on the slopes of the Eastern Andes, in the Serranía de la Macarena and locally in the Magdalena valley. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in Venezuela, the tepui region of Guyana and the far north of Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Watch flowering shrubs in gardens, along roads and in coffee plantations in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, for example around Minca. Birds often return to the same flowers.
Conservation status
Least Concern. It tolerates a semi-open, human-shaped landscape.
Scientific name
Phaethornis augusti | (Bourcier, 1847)
Bourcier described the species in 1847 as Trochilus augusti; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Phaethornis was introduced in 1827 by Swainson. The genus name combines Ancient Greek phaethōn, 'sun', with ornis, 'bird'. The species name honours Auguste Sallé (1820–1896), a French entomologist and traveller who collected many hummingbirds in Central America. The specimen the first description was based on came from Caracas, Venezuela.