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Grey-Chinned Sunbird | Anthreptes tephrolaemus
Grijskinhoningzuiger | Suimanga Barbigrís
The Grey-Chinned Sunbird is a small, short-billed rainforest sunbird with metallic green upperparts, a grey chin and throat and a narrow orange breast band. It was long treated as a form of the West African Yellow-Chinned Sunbird (Anthreptes rectirostris), but is now recognised as a separate species.
Voice
A sharp, thin tsip and a quick series of high tsee notes. The song is a short, high and rather high twitter from the canopy.
Recording: James Bradley — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 10 cm, with a short, straight bill. The male is glossy metallic green above, on the head and on the cheeks. Chin and throat are grey, followed by a narrow orange to orange-yellow breast band; the belly is greyish to pale yellow, with yellow pectoral tufts. The female is olive-green above, with a grey throat and pale yellow underparts, and no breast band. Juveniles resemble the female but are greener below.
Confusion species
Collared Sunbird (Hedydipna collaris) is smaller, and the male has a metallic green throat with a narrow purple breast band above a yellow belly. The male Olive-Bellied Sunbird (Cinnyris chloropygius) has a decurved bill, a green throat and a red breast band. Little Green Sunbird (Anthreptes seimundi) lacks any gloss. Females are best identified by the short straight bill combined with the grey throat.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of lowland rainforest and old secondary forest, gallery forest and forest edge with tall trees. It feeds mainly on insects and spiders among the leaves, often in mixed flocks, and also visits flowering trees and mistletoes.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region only in northern Angola, in Cabinda and the forests of Uíge and Cuanza Norte. Beyond, from Nigeria and Cameroon through the Congo Basin to Uganda, western Kenya and north-western Tanzania. The Yellow-Chinned Sunbird lives only from Sierra Leone to Ghana.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the forests of northern Angola, look for mixed flocks in the canopy and watch for a small, glossy green male with a grey throat and a thin orange band.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species is widespread in the rainforest, but in Angola it is local and dependent on the remaining northern forests, which are being cleared for timber and farming.
Scientific name
Anthreptes tephrolaemus | (Jardine & Fraser, 1852)
Jardine & Fraser described the species in 1852 as Nectarinia tephrolaemus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Anthreptes was introduced in 1832 by Swainson. Anthreptes comes from the Greek anthos, 'flower', and threptēs, 'feeder' — for the habit of taking nectar from flowers. tephrolaemus comes from the Greek tephros, 'ash-grey', and laimos, 'throat' — for the male's grey throat. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bioko (Fernando Po), Equatorial Guinea.