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Violet-bellied Hummingbird | Chlorestes julie
Paarsbuikkolibrie | Colibrí de Julia
The Violet-bellied Hummingbird is one of the smallest hummingbirds of Panama. The male is green with a violet-blue breast and belly and a short dark tail. In the guide area it occurs only in central and eastern Panama, where it is common around the Panama Canal.
Voice
A soft, dry tsik and a song of high, thin and hissing notes.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
7–8 cm, with a short, slightly decurved bill that is black above and has a pink lower mandible with a dark tip. The male has green upperparts, a glittering green crown and throat, a violet-blue breast and belly and a short, blue-black, slightly forked tail. The female is green above and pale grey below, with small green spots on the flanks and a dark tail with grey tips.
Confusion species
The male Crowned Woodnymph Thalurania colombica is much larger, also has a violet band across the upper back and a deeply forked tail. Blue-chested Hummingbird Polyerata amabilis has only a blue patch on the breast and a grey belly. The female resembles that of Blue-chested Hummingbird, but is smaller and has a shorter bill.
Habitat
Edges of humid and drier lowland forest, secondary forest, open woodland, scrub and gardens, from sea level to about 900 m. It often feeds in the undergrowth and at middle levels, including at small flowers that larger hummingbirds ignore.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In the guide area only in Panama, from Coclé and the Panama Canal area eastwards on both slopes to Darién. Outside the guide area in northern and western Colombia, western Ecuador and the far north-west of Peru.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the Panama Canal area, for example along Pipeline Road in Soberanía National Park and in the Parque Natural Metropolitano in Panama City, at flowering shrubs along forest edges.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common within its range. The species tolerates secondary forest and gardens.
Scientific name
Chlorestes julie | (Bourcier, 1842)
Bourcier described the species in 1842 as Ornismyia julie; 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'. julie honours Anne-Julie Mulsant, née de Ronchivol (1801–1868), wife of the French ornithologist Martial Étienne Mulsant. The specimen the first description was based on came from Tunja, Colombia.