Volume 36, Plate V / Ornithology (Birds)

Splendid Sun-Bird

Nectarinia splendida

A large and gorgeously dressed species, the adult male five and a half to nearly six inches, with brilliant golden green back and tail-coverts, steel-blue head and throat, and a breast band appearing scarlet, violet, green or blue as the light shifts, with pale lemon-yellow tufts at the sides. Found near the Fish River and Sierra Leone, it nests in worm-eaten mimosa trunks and lays four or five white eggs, the female an earthy brown paler beneath.