Illustration not included in supplement volume
This species, which is easily recognized by its black bill, with the basal half of the lower mandible flesh-coloured, is an inhabitant of Venezuela and Colombia.
Considerable variation in colour is to be noticed in a series, and we cannot do better than quote Mr. Elliot’s remarks on this subject:—
Specimens vary, like those of other species of Chlorostilbon, in the shades of green possessed in their plumages; and some have brilliant crowns. It is to these individuals that Mr. Lawrence has given the name of nitens, as above cited. His specimen came from Venezuela, but as I have a specimen from the same country with a green crown, like the majority of those from Colombia, I do not deem this of sufficient importance to constitute a species, especially as in other respects the examples are alike. I have therefore placed Mr. Lawrence’s name as a synonym of C. hæberlini. Specimens from Venezuela and Colombia are not to be distinguished from each other, with which also those brought by Mr. Wyatt from near Cartagena (the locality of the type of C. hæberlini) fully agree.
Mr. Wyatt, writing of this species at Ocaña in the Magdalena valley, says:—
We had an opportunity while here of seeing the Humming-bird feeding its young, which is performed in the same way as it is by a Pigeon. A young Chlorostilbon hæberlini was sitting on a coffee-shrub, which grew under a large tree, around the blossoms of which the Humming-birds congregated. The old bird came, and, having first swallowed the food herself, ejected it into the mouth of the young one. We afterwards caught the young one in a butterfly-net.
[R. B. S.]
Featuring all 422 illustrated species from John Gould’s A Monograph of the Trochilidæ, or Family of Humming-Birds arranged by color.
Humming-Birds
