The olive sunbird (''Cyanomitra olivacea'') is a species of
sunbird found in a large part of
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
south of the
Sahel
The Sahel (; ar, ساحل ' , "coast, shore") is a region in North Africa. It is defined as the ecoclimatic and biogeographic realm of transition between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian savanna to the south. Having a hot semi-arid c ...
. It prefers forested regions, and is absent from drier, more open regions such as the
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa.Robert Stock, ''Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation'', (The Guilford Press; 2004), ...
and most of south-central and south-western Africa. It is sometimes placed in the genus ''Nectarinia''.
The western subspecies (roughly west of the
East African Rift
The East African Rift (EAR) or East African Rift System (EARS) is an active continental rift zone in East Africa. The EAR began developing around the onset of the Miocene, 22–25 million years ago. In the past it was considered to be part of a ...
) are sometimes split as the western olive sunbird, ''Cyanomitra obscura'', in which case ''Cyanomitra olivacea'' becomes the eastern olive sunbird
References
Further reading
*
External links
* Olive sunbird
Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
olive sunbird
Birds of the Gulf of Guinea
Birds of Sub-Saharan Africa
olive sunbird
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot
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