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Green-breasted Mountaingem | Lampornis sybillae
Groenbuikjuweelkolibrie | Colibrí de Sibila
The Green-breasted Mountaingem lives only in the mountains of central and eastern Honduras and northern and central Nicaragua. It was long treated as a subspecies of Green-throated Mountaingem Lampornis viridipallens. It feeds in the understorey and along the edges of cloud forest and pine-oak forest.
Voice
A dry chik, sometimes in rapid series, hardly different from the call of Green-throated Mountaingem.
Recording: Nick Komar — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11 cm, with a straight black bill. The upperparts are glittering green, with a white stripe behind the eye and a dark ear patch. The male has a white throat spotted with green, a breast and flanks that are densely spotted to largely green, a whitish centre to the belly and a dark, greyish-tinged tail. The female has less green on the throat, pale underparts with greenish flanks and grey tips to the outer tail feathers.
Confusion species
In the male Green-throated Mountaingem Lampornis viridipallens, further west, there is less green on the breast and flanks and the tail is darker, greyish black; females are hardly separable. Male Amethyst-throated Mountaingems Lampornis amethystinus, which live at the same elevations in Honduras, have a violet throat and dark grey underparts, the females a cinnamon throat. White-eared Hummingbird Basilinna leucotis has a red bill with a black tip.
Habitat
Cloud forest and humid pine-oak forest, forest edges and clearings with flowering shrubs, at about 900 to 2200 m. It feeds mainly low, at flowering shrubs in the understorey and along trails, and catches small insects. Outside the breeding season some birds move to lower slopes.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Endemic to the guide area. In the mountains of central and eastern Honduras, including around Tegucigalpa and in Olancho, and in the northern and central highlands of Nicaragua, in the departments of Jinotega and Matagalpa.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In La Tigra National Park and on Cerro Uyuca near Tegucigalpa, and in Nicaragua in the cloud forests around Matagalpa and Jinotega, at flowering shrubs along forest trails and edges.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Locally fairly common, but the range is small and fragmented, and montane forest in Honduras and Nicaragua is declining through deforestation and the spread of agriculture.
Scientific name
Lampornis sybillae | (Salvin & Godman, 1892)
Salvin & Godman described the species in 1892 as Delattria sybillae; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Lampornis was introduced in 1827 by Swainson. Lampornis is Greek, from lampē 'torch, light' and ornis 'bird': 'light-bird', after the glittering throat. sybillae honours Sybil Maitland Salvin (1867–1925), eldest daughter of the English ornithologist Osbert Salvin. The specimen the first description was based on came from Matagalpa, Nicaragua.