The green-breasted mountaingem or green-breasted mountain-gem (''Lampornis sybillae'') is a species of
hummingbird
Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the biological family Trochilidae. With about 361 species and 113 genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but the vast majority of the species are found in the tropics aro ...
in tribe
Lampornithini of subfamily
Trochilinae. It is found in
Honduras
Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...
and
Nicaragua.
[HBW and BirdLife International (2020) ''Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world'' Version 5. Available at: http://datazone.birdlife.org/userfiles/file/Species/Taxonomy/HBW-BirdLife_Checklist_v5_Dec20.zip xls zipped 1 MBretrieved 27 May 2021]
Taxonomy and systematics
The green-breasted mountaingem has sometimes been considered
conspecific with its close relative the
green-throated mountaingem (''Lampornis viridipallens'') or may form a
superspecies with it.
[Züchner, T. and P. F. D. Boesman (2020). Green-throated Mountain-gem (''Lampornis viridipallens''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.gtmgem1.01 retrieved 18 May 2022][van Dort, J. (2020). Green-breasted Mountain-gem (''Lampornis sybillae''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.gbmgem1.01 retrieved 18 May 2022] It is
monotypic.
[
]
Description
The green-breasted mountaingem is about long and weighs about ; males are larger than females. It has a medium-length straight black bill. Adults of both sexes have deep metallic grass green upperparts with some bronze on the rump and black uppertail coverts
A covert feather or tectrix on a bird is one of a set of feathers, called coverts (or ''tectrices''), which, as the name implies, cover other feathers. The coverts help to smooth airflow over the wings and tail. Ear coverts
The ear coverts are sm ...
. They have a white stripe that curves down behind the eye and deep metallic grass green cheeks with a thin white stripe below them.[
Adult males' underparts are also mostly metallic grass green, with white or grayish white margins on the feathers. Their lower belly, vent area, and leg tufts are white. Their inner undertail coverts are green with white edges and the outer ones dusky gray with wide white edges. Their central tail feathers are grayish black and the others pale gray to grayish white with dusky margins.][
Adult females have a buff chin and throat and grayish white underparts with metallic green on the sides of the breast. The outermost two pairs of tail feathers are white or grayish white with a dusky gray bar near the end; neither have the male's dusky margins. Some individuals have a green sheen on the upperside of the central tail feathers, which males never have.][
Juveniles have dark green mottling on their throat and buffy to cinnamon tips on the upperparts' feathers. Older immature birds begin to show the adults' throat and tail colors.][
]
Distribution and habitat
The green-breasted mountaingem is found in central and eastern Honduras and northwestern Nicaragua. It inhabits the interior and edges of humid evergreen and pine-oak forest and also the transition zone from the latter into cloudforest
A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF), is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud c ...
. In elevation it generally ranges between , though some authors extend that range to between .[
]
Behavior
Movement
The green-breasted mountaingem is thought to make seasonal elevational movements.[
]
Feeding
The green-breasted mountaingem feeds on nectar and small insects and spiders, but details of it diet and foraging techniques are lacking.[
]
Breeding
Almost nothing is known about the green-breasted mountaingem's breeding phenology
Phenology is the study of periodic events in biological life cycles and how these are influenced by seasonality, seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as environmental factor, habitat factors (such as elevation).
Examples includ ...
. Data suggest that its breeding season is approximately November to February.[
]
Vocalization
The green-breasted mountaingem's song is "a soft, scratchy warble...often with a trill at the end". Males usually sing from hidden perches, though sometimes in the open or in flight. Both sexes give "short, buzzy 'shrrrt' calls" while feeding.[
]
Status
The IUCN
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...
has assessed the green-breasted mountaingem as being of Least Concern, though its population size is unknown and believed to be decreasing. No immediate threats have been identified.[ " propriate habitat in the Green-breasted Mountain-gem’s small and patchy distribution is likely to further decrease in size" due to global warming.][
]
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1262172
green-breasted mountaingem
Birds of Honduras
Birds of Nicaragua
green-breasted mountaingem
green-breasted mountaingem
green-breasted mountaingem
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot