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White-vented Plumeleteer | Chalybura buffonii
Buffons pluimkolibrie | Colibrí de Buffon
The White-vented Plumeleteer is a medium-sized, green hummingbird with a blue-black tail and conspicuously long, white undertail coverts. In the guide area it occurs only in central and eastern Panama. It lives mainly along forest edges, in secondary forest and in gardens, and is less tied to closed forest than the related Bronze-tailed Plumeleteer.
Voice
A dry chik and in chases a fast, twittering squeaking.
Recording: Nick Athanas — CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm, with a slightly decurved black bill. The male is glossy green, glittering on the throat and breast, with a steel-blue to blue-black tail and long, pure white undertail coverts. The female is green above and pale grey below, with the same white undertail coverts and a blue-black tail with grey tips to the outer feathers.
Confusion species
Bronze-tailed Plumeleteer Chalybura urochrysia has a bronze tail, greyish undertail coverts and pink feet. The male Crowned Woodnymph Thalurania colombica has a violet belly and a deeply forked tail. Rufous-tailed Hummingbird Amazilia tzacatl has a red bill and a rufous tail.
Habitat
Edges of humid and drier lowland forest, secondary forest, scrub, gallery forest, parks and gardens with flowering trees, from sea level to about 1000 m. It feeds at all levels, from the understorey up into flowering trees, and catches small insects.
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 the Panama Canal area east on both slopes to Darién. Outside the guide area in northern Colombia and north-western Venezuela, and in western Ecuador and north-western 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 and trees along forest edges.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Fairly common within its range. It tolerates secondary forest and semi-open country well.
Scientific name
Chalybura buffonii | (Lesson, 1832)
Lesson described the species in 1832 as Trochilus buffonii; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Chalybura was introduced in 1854 by Reichenbach. Chalybura is Greek, from khalups, khalubos 'steel' and oura 'tail', after the steel-blue glossy tail. buffonii honours the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), author of the Histoire naturelle. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bogotá region, Colombia (designated; originally given in error as 'Brazil').