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Green Honeycreeper | Chlorophanes spiza
Groene suikervogel | Mielero verde
The Green Honeycreeper is the largest and stoutest of Trinidad's honeycreepers, with a slightly curved, largely yellow bill. Despite the name it eats mainly fruit, supplemented by insects and nectar. In the Caribbean it lives only on Trinidad.
Voice
The song is rarely heard: a scratchy, high tst tst CHIT followed by rapid chattering. Calls are mostly high, thin notes.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–14 cm, with a fairly long tail and a sturdy, slightly curved bill. The male is glossy blue-green to emerald, with a black head or mask; the bill is bright yellow with a black ridge. The female is uniform grass-green, paler below, with a pale throat; her upper mandible is black, the lower dull yellow.
Confusion species
Female Swallow Tanager Tersina viridis is also grass-green, but has a broad, flat bill and barred flanks. Females of Purple Honeycreeper Cyanerpes caeruleus and Red-legged Honeycreeper Cyanerpes cyaneus are smaller, with a dark bill and streaked underparts. Female Blue Dacnis Dacnis cayana has a bluish head and a short, dark bill. Female euphonias are more compact, with a short, thick bill.
Habitat
The interior and edges of moist forest, both mature and secondary, and shaded cacao plantations in the hills and mountains. Mainly a canopy bird that feeds lower at forest edges. It looks for fruit and insects in pairs or in mixed flocks with other tanagers and honeycreepers, and comes to feeders.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Within the Caribbean only on Trinidad, where it is common in the forested north and in wooded areas elsewhere; it is absent from Tobago. Isolated reports from Barbados and Martinique are unconfirmed. Outside the region from southern Mexico through Central America to Bolivia and Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Found at fruit feeders and in fruiting trees along forest edges in the Northern Range, such as in the Arima Valley. The male is identified by its yellow bill, the female by its uniform green colour and the curved bill with a yellow lower mandible.
Conservation status
Not threatened. A widespread species that also occurs in second growth.
Scientific name
Chlorophanes spiza | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Motacilla Spiza; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Chlorophanes was introduced in 1853 by Reichenbach. Chlorophanes is Greek, from khlōros 'green' and -phanēs 'showing': 'showing green', after the glossy green plumage. spiza is the Greek word for 'finch'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Suriname.