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Orange-Breasted Sunbird | Anthobaphes violacea
Oranjeborsthoningzuiger | Suimanga Pechinaranja
The Orange-Breasted Sunbird is the most colourful sunbird of the fynbos and the only one confined almost entirely to it. The male combines a glossy green head with a violet breast band, an orange breast and elongated central tail feathers; it is the chief bird pollinator of the heath-like ericas.
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Voice
A metallic, nasal tsheek or tweek, often repeated in flight. The song is a fast, hurried twitter of high, grating and chirping notes, delivered from a bush top; during chases a rattling tchit-tchit-tchirrr is heard.
Recording: JJSUN — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
Male 14 to 16 cm including the pointed, elongated central tail feathers, female 12 to 13 cm. The male has a metallic green head and throat, a violet-blue band across the upper breast, a bright orange breast fading to yellow on the belly, and an olive-green back; yellow pectoral tufts show in display. The female is plain olive-green above and greenish yellow below, without gloss and without tail projections. The bill is black, thin and clearly decurved. Young males at first resemble the female and acquire the gloss in patches.
Confusion species
The male is unmistakable. Female Southern Double-Collared Sunbird (Cinnyris chalybeus) is greyer-brown, less yellow below and shorter-billed. Female Malachite Sunbird (Nectarinia famosa) is larger, with a longer bill and a faint pale eyebrow, and greyer below with yellow mottling. Cape Sugarbird (Promerops cafer) is much larger and streaked.
Habitat
Mountain and coastal fynbos with flowering ericas, proteas and other nectar plants, from sea level to high in the mountains, and also gardens and botanical gardens with fynbos plantings. It avoids renosterveld and forest. Besides nectar it takes many small insects and spiders; outside the flowering season it shifts to slopes where something is in bloom.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Endemic to the fynbos biome of South Africa: from the Cederberg area southwards to the Cape Peninsula and eastwards along the coastal ranges and the Langeberg to about Gqeberha and Makhanda in the Eastern Cape. It occurs nowhere else.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Kirstenbosch, Table Mountain, Harold Porter at Betty's Bay and the passes over the Hottentots Holland Mountains are reliable sites. In winter, when many ericas flower, males perch conspicuously on the bush tops and chase each other with loud chirping. With females, concentrate on the yellow tone of the underparts and the fine decurved bill.
Conservation status
Not threatened, but with a small range coinciding with a biome under pressure. Overly frequent fires, invasion by alien trees and shrubs and conversion of fynbos to farmland and housing reduce the habitat; the species is vulnerable to climate change because the fynbos cannot shift northwards.
Scientific name
Anthobaphes violacea | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Certhia violacea; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Anthobaphes was introduced in 1851 by Cabanis. Anthobaphes is the Greek anthobaphēs, 'bright-coloured', literally 'flower-dyed', from anthos, 'flower', and baphē, 'dyeing' — for the male's colourful plumage. violacea is Latin for 'violet-coloured', from viola, 'violet' — for the male's violet breast band. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cape of Good Hope.