The hyacinth visorbearer (''Augastes scutatus'') 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 the family

Trochilidae 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 arou ...

. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Taxonomy and systematics

The hyacinth visorbearer shares its genus with only one other species, the

hooded visorbearer The hooded visorbearer (''Augastes lumachella'') is a small species of hummingbird in the family Trochilidae. Endemic to the east Brazilian state of Bahia, it is found only at higher altitudes in the Chapada Diamantina region. The species is sexu ...

(''A. lumachella''). It has three subspecies, the nominate ''A. s. scutatus'', ''A. s. ilseae'', and ''A. s. soaresi''. The subspecies are very similar and "might be better treated as

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

."Schuchmann, K.L. and G. M. Kirwan (2020). Hyacinth Visorbearer (''Augastes scutatus''), 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.hyavis1.01 retrieved December 14, 2021

Description

Hyacinth visorbearer males are long and weigh . Females are long and weigh . In addition to being longer overall and heavier than females, males also have longer wings and tail. Both sexes have a short bill, but that of the male is longer. Males of the nominate subspecies have a shiny golden green forehead; the rest of the upperparts and the tail are bronze-green. The throat is also shiny golden green with a black edge and the belly is deep blue; between them is a creamy white to pink band across the chest. The sides of the neck have a purplish blue "ruff". The female lacks the black edge to the green throat, the blue belly is mottled with gray and blue-green, and the outer tail feathers are tipped with gray. ''A. s. ilseae'' has dark violet ruffs, a violet-blue belly, and bluish green on the underside of the tail. ''A. s. soaresi'' is the largest subspecies; in plumage it differs from the nominate only by having a blue line between the violet and green areas of the head.

Distribution and habitat

The hyacinth visorbearer is found only in the Brazilian state of

Minas Gerais Minas Gerais () is a state in Southeastern Brazil. It ranks as the second most populous, the third by gross domestic product (GDP), and the fourth largest by area in the country. The state's capital and largest city, Belo Horizonte (literally ...

. The nominate subspecies is found at elevations from about in the central and eastern parts of the state. It typically inhabits dry rocky areas with low vegetation (''

campos rupestres The ''campo rupestre'' ("rupestrian grassland") is a discontinuous montane subtropical ecoregion occurring across three different biomes in Brazil: Cerrado, Atlantic Forest and Caatinga. Originally, ''campo rupestre'' was used to characterize th ...

''). ''A. s. ilseae'' has essentially the same range but at elevations between about . It is usually found in

gallery forest A gallery forest is one formed as a corridor along rivers or wetlands, projecting into landscapes that are otherwise only sparsely treed such as savannas, grasslands, or deserts. The gallery forest maintains a more temperate microclimate above th ...

and bushy areas. ''A. s. soaresi'' is limited to the upper reaches of the

Piracicaba River The Piracicaba River is a river of São Paulo state in southeastern Brazil. It is a tributary of the Tietê River, which it joins in the reservoir created by Barra Bonita Dam. There is also another Piracicaba river in the state of Minas Gerais, n ...

basin in south-central Minas Gerais. It inhabits ravines in

montane forest Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is a crucial f ...

at elevations between about .

Behavior

Movement

The hyacinth visorbearer is sedentary.

Feeding

The hyacinth visorbearer typically forages above ground, taking nectar from a wide variety of flowering plants including terrestrial

bromeliad The Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) are a family of monocot flowering plants of about 80 genera and 3700 known species, native mainly to the tropical Americas, with several species found in the American subtropics and one in tropical west Africa, ...

s and cacti. It also takes small insects by flying out from a perch and returning to it, and sometimes gleans them while perched as well. Males defend feeding territories, especially those with groups of flowering plants; females tend to feed in more sparsely flowered areas and do not defend them.

Breeding

The hyacinth visorbearer appears to nest at any time of the year. The nest is a small cup of

Compositae The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. Commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family, Compositae w ...

seeds, cactus "wool", and other fibers. It has leaf and moss fragments attached with spider web to the outer surface and is lined with softer material. It is typically placed in a vertical fork of branches above the ground. The clutch size is two white eggs. Incubation, by the female alone, lasts 15 to 16 days with fledging 19 to 25 days after hatch.

Vocalization

The hyacinth visorbearer's song is a "series of high, dry 'tjic', 'whi', 'zuzu', and other notes." Only males sing, usually from two or three perches within their territories. Both sexes make a variety of calls in response to threats.

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 ...

originally assessed the hyacinth visorbearer as Threatened; in 2004 it was reassessed as Near Threatened and then in 2018 as being of Least Concern. Though its population size is unknown it is believed to be stable. It has a restricted range, but its habitat is mostly unsuited to agriculture so mining appears to be the only immediate potential threat. It is locally common and occurs in several protected areas.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1039427 hyacinth visorbearer Birds of Brazil Endemic birds of Brazil hyacinth visorbearer Taxonomy articles created by Polbot