All species › Passerines › Tanagers and allies › Red-legged Honeycreeper
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Red-legged Honeycreeper | Cyanerpes cyaneus
Blauwe suikervogel | Mielero pata roja
The Red-legged Honeycreeper is the most widespread honeycreeper of the guide area: a small tanager with a long, curved bill and red legs. The male is deep purple-blue with a turquoise crown; in flight the yellow underside of the wing shows. It occurs from southern Mexico to Panama and eats nectar, fruit and insects.
Voice
A thin, hoarse cheep and a nasal, mewing call; the song is a series of short, thin notes.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12–13 cm. Slender, with a short tail and a long, slightly curved black bill. The breeding male is purple-blue with a pale turquoise crown, black lores, a black back, black wings and tail and bright red legs; the underwing is yellow. Outside the breeding season the male is green like the female but keeps black wings and tail. The female is olive-green with faint streaks on the paler underparts, a pale supercilium and dull red legs.
Confusion species
Shining Honeycreeper Cyanerpes lucidus and Purple Honeycreeper C. caeruleus are smaller, with a shorter tail, yellow legs and a black throat patch. The male Blue Dacnis Dacnis cayana has a short, pointed bill and a brighter turquoise-blue plumage. The female resembles the female Green Honeycreeper Chlorophanes spiza, which is larger and more uniformly green with a yellow bill base.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of humid and semi-dry forest, mature secondary forest, plantations, shade coffee, gardens and parks, from sea level to about 1200 m. It moves to flowering and fruiting trees and often visits fruit feeders.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Southern Mexico, from Veracruz and Oaxaca, including the Yucatán Peninsula, and on through all of Central America on both slopes to Panama. Outside the guide area on Cuba, in northern South America and in Amazonia and Atlantic Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Easy to see at feeders with bananas and papaya at lodges in Costa Rica and Panama; in the lowlands of Yucatán also in gardens and village trees.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Common across much of the guide area; locally trapped as a cage bird.
Scientific name
Cyanerpes cyaneus | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Certhia cyanea; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Cyanerpes was introduced in 1899 by Oberholser. Cyanerpes is Greek, from kuanos 'dark blue' and herpēs 'creeper'. cyaneus is Latin, from the Greek kuaneos 'dark blue'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Suriname.