All species › Passerines › Sunbirds › Southern Double-Collared Sunbird
Southern Double-Collared Sunbird | Cinnyris chalybeus
Kleine kraaghoningzuiger | Suimanga Acerado
The Southern Double-Collared Sunbird is a small sunbird in which the male wears a narrow scarlet breast band below a metallic green throat. It is one of the commonest nectar-feeders of the fynbos and of Cape gardens.
Click a thumbnail to switch the photo above.
Voice
A sharp metallic tching-tching contact note, often in series. The song is a rapid, scratchy, twittering mix of high notes lasting several seconds, delivered from a bush top or a flowering branch.
Recording: African Bioacoustics Community — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
Small and short-billed, 11 to 13 cm long and 6 to 10 grams in weight. The male has a metallic green head, throat and upperparts, below that a narrow blue-violet band and then a scarlet breast band about a centimetre wide; the belly is grey-olive. Yellow pectoral tufts appear in display. The female is plain grey-brown above and paler grey-buff below, with no red. The bill is short and decurved. In poor light the male's metallic green looks black.
Confusion species
Greater Double-Collared Sunbird (Cinnyris afer) is noticeably bigger, about 14 cm, with a red breast band roughly twice as wide and a longer, heavier bill; the two occur together over a wide area. Orange-Breasted Sunbird (Anthobaphes violacea) of the fynbos has orange-yellow underparts and long tail streamers. Female sunbirds are best named by size and by the company they keep.
Habitat
Fynbos, coastal dune scrub, karoo riverine thicket, forest edge, plantations and gardens with aloes, ericas, proteas and other nectar plants. It hangs or perches at the flower and inserts the bill; it also takes small insects and spiders.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Endemic to southern Africa. The species occupies the Western and Eastern Cape, the south and east of the Northern Cape, the western Free State, Lesotho, Eswatini and KwaZulu-Natal, and reaches southern Namibia along the Orange River. It does not extend further north.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Winter, from May to August, is the best time: the aloes are in flower and birds gather at stands of Aloe arborescens and Aloe ferox. In Cape gardens and at Kirstenbosch the species can be seen all year on ericas and proteas. Whenever a male with a red band appears, check the width of that band to rule out Greater Double-Collared Sunbird.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species is numerous and numbers are stable. It benefits from gardens, parks and planted nectar sources, and is common in urban areas as a result. It disappears locally only where indigenous scrub is cleared entirely.
Scientific name
Cinnyris chalybeus | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Certhia chalybea; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Cinnyris was introduced in 1816 by Cuvier, GLCFD. Cinnyris derives from the Greek kinnuris, the name of a small bird mentioned by the lexicographer Hesychius that cannot be identified further. chalybeus is Latin for 'of steel', for the metallic, steel-blue to steel-green sheen of the male's head feathers and breast band. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cape of Good Hope.