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Blue-chinned Sapphire | Chlorestes notata
Blauwkinsaffierkolibrie | Zafiro barbiazul
The Blue-chinned Sapphire is a small, mainly green hummingbird of forests in northern South America, which in the Caribbean is a resident in Trinidad. It is less often noticed than many of the island's other hummingbirds and often keeps high in flowering trees. It was formerly often placed in the genus Chlorostilbon.
Voice
The song is a high, metallic series ssoo-ssoo-ssoo.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
8.5–9 cm, with a fairly straight bill, the upper mandible black and the lower reddish. The male is mainly green, darker above, with a blue chin and upper throat, white thighs and a forked metallic-blue tail. The female is green above and white below with green spotting, and also has a blue tail.
Confusion species
Blue-tailed Emerald Chlorostilbon mellisugus is smaller with an all-black bill; the male lacks the blue chin. Copper-rumped Hummingbird Saucerottia tobaci has a black bill, a coppery rump and rufous undertail coverts. White-chested Emerald Chrysuronia brevirostris resembles the female but has a blackish bill and a bronze-green, not blue, tail. In all plumages the reddish lower mandible is the key feature.
Habitat
Humid forest, forest edges and secondary growth, and cultivated land with large trees, such as shaded cacao plantations. It often feeds in the canopy of flowering trees but also comes low to flowering shrubs.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Resident in Trinidad. Only a few records from Tobago. Elsewhere from Colombia and Venezuela through the Guianas to Peru and Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Trinidad in the forests and at forest edges of the Northern Range and the lowlands, especially at flowering trees. Birds feeding high in a canopy can often only be identified in good light by the reddish lower mandible and the blue tail.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a large range and is locally common.
Scientific name
Chlorestes notata | (Reich, 1793)
Reich described the species in 1793 as Trochilus notatus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Chlorestes was introduced in 1854 by Reichenbach. Chlorestes is Greek, from khlōros 'green' and esthēs 'clothing': 'clad in green'. notata is Latin for 'marked, spotted', from notare 'to mark'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.