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Shining Honeycreeper | Cyanerpes lucidus
Geelpootsuikervogel | Mielero brillante
The Shining Honeycreeper is a small, short-tailed tanager with a long, curved bill that searches the canopy of humid forest for nectar, fruit and insects. The male is deep purple-blue with a black throat, and both sexes have bright yellow legs. In the guide area it occurs from southern Mexico to Panama.
Voice
A thin, high tseet and a soft, thin twitter; no distinct song.
Recording: Johan Chaves — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11 cm. Small and compact, with a short tail and a long, thin, curved black bill. The male is glossy purple-blue with a fairly large black throat patch, black lores, black wings and tail. The female is green with a bluish head, a pale ochre throat and blue streaks on the greenish breast. Legs bright yellow in both sexes.
Confusion species
Purple Honeycreeper Cyanerpes caeruleus (eastern Panama only) is very similar; the male has a smaller black throat patch, the female an ochre-brown face and green rather than blue streaks on the breast. Red-legged Honeycreeper Cyanerpes cyaneus is larger, with red legs, a pale turquoise crown and yellow underwings. Dacnises Dacnis have a short, pointed bill.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of humid lowland and foothill forest, up to about 1200 m; also tall trees in clearings, mature secondary forest and shade coffee. Often in mixed flocks with other tanagers and dacnises.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Southern Mexico (Chiapas) and Belize through the Caribbean slope of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to Costa Rica and Panama, there on both slopes. Outside the guide area to north-western Colombia.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Mostly seen at flowering or fruiting trees along forest edges, and at fruit feeders at lodges in Costa Rica and Panama, where it sometimes appears beside Red-legged Honeycreeper.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Fairly common in the south of its range, scarcer in the north.
Scientific name
Cyanerpes lucidus | (Sclater & Salvin, 1859)
Sclater & Salvin described the species in 1859 as Coereba lucida; 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'. lucidus is Latin for 'shining, bright', after the male's brilliant blue plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Guatemala.