The sooty-capped hermit (''Phaethornis augusti'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

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 ...

, the

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 ...

s. It is found in

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 ...

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

French Guiana French Guiana ( or ; french: link=no, Guyane ; gcr, label=French Guianese Creole, Lagwiyann ) is an overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France on the northern Atlantic ...

Guyana Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...

Suriname Suriname (; srn, Sranankondre or ), officially the Republic of Suriname ( nl, Republiek Suriname , srn, Ripolik fu Sranan), is a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north ...

, and

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 24 August 2021. Species Lists of Birds for South American Countries and Territories. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCCountryLists.htm retrieved August 24, 2021

Taxonomy and systematics

The sooty-capped hermit is closely related to the

planalto hermit The planalto hermit (''Phaethornis pretrei'') is a species of bird in the family Trochilidae, the hummingbirds. It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Peru.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaram ...

(''P. pretrei'') and may form a superspecies with it. Three subspecies of sooty-capped hermit are recognized, the nominate ''P. a. augusti'', ''P. a. curiosus'', and ''P. a incanescens''. A fourth proposed subspecies ''P. a. vicarius'', in the Colombian Andes, cannot be separated from the nominate.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 24 August 2021. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithological Society. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCBaseline.htm retrieved August 24, 2021Hinkelmann, C., P. F. D. Boesman, and G. M. Kirwan (2020). Sooty-capped Hermit (''Phaethornis augusti''), 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.socher1.01 retrieved November 29, 2021

Description

The sooty-capped hermit is about long. Males weigh and females . They are mostly grayish brown above with a rufous rump and 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 ...

. The next-to-inner tail feathers are longer than the others and all have white tips. Their underparts are gray. The face has a black "mask" with a white

supercilium The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also ...

and gular stripe. The subspecies differ slightly in the intensity of the breast and uppertail covert colors and the size of the gular stripe. What was once thought to be a separate species ''P. fumosus'' was determined to be a

melanistic The term melanism refers to black pigment and is derived from the gr, μελανός. Melanism is the increased development of the dark-colored pigment melanin in the skin or hair. Pseudomelanism, also called abundism, is another variant of pi ...

morph of the nominate sooty-capped hermit.

Distribution and habitat

Major taxonomic systems place the nominate subspecies of sooty-capped hermit in Venezuela's Coastal Range and eastern Andes and south on the eastern slope of Colombia's Eastern Andes; ''P. a. curiosus'' in the isolated

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (English: ''Snow-Covered Mountain Range of Saint Martha'') is an isolated mountain range in northern Colombia, separate from the Andes range that runs through the north of the country. Reaching an elevation of ...

of northeastern Colombia; and ''P. a incanescens'' on the

tepui A tepui , or tepuy (), is a table-top mountain or mesa found in South America, especially in Venezuela and western Guyana. The word tepui means "house of the gods" in the native tongue of the Pemon, the indigenous people who inhabit the Gran S ...

s of southern Venezuela, western Guyana, and Brazil's

Roraima Roraima (, ) is one of the 26 states of Brazil. Located in the country's North Region, it is the northernmost and most geographically and logistically isolated state in Brazil. It is bordered by the state of Pará to the southeast, Amazonas ...

state.Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2021. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2021. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/ Retrieved August 25, 2021 The South American Classification Committee (SACC) of the

American Ornithological Society The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its m ...

places the species in those four countries and also French Guiana and Suriname.

Behavior

Movement

The sooty-capped hermit is thought to be mostly sedentary, but some seasonal vertical movement has been documented.

Feeding

The sooty-capped hermit is a " trap-line" feeder like other hermit hummingbirds, visiting a circuit of flowering plants for nectar. It also consumes small

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...

s, and has been observed catching them in buildings.

Breeding

Active nests of the sooty-capped hermit have been found in Venezuela between February and July and also between September and December. The nest is a cone-shaped cup; a typical one was made of moss and spider web with pieces of dried mud on the outer wall. It was suspended by a single stout cable of

spider silk Spider silk is a protein fibre spun by spiders. Spiders use their silk to make Spider web, webs or other structures, which function as sticky nets to catch other animals, or as nests or cocoons to protect their offspring, or to wrap up prey. ...

from a nail in a storehouse. Nests may be reused multiple times within a season. The clutch size is two eggs.

Vocalization

The sooty-capped hermit's song is "a continuously repeated phrase consisting of 2–3 high notes followed by 2–3 somewhat lower ones, e.g. 'tsee-tsee-tsee-sew-sew....tsee-tsee-tsee-sew-sew...'." The male sings from a perch at a

lek Lek or LEK may refer to: * Lek mating, mating in a lek, a type of animal territory in which males of a species gather * Albanian lek, the currency of Albania * Lek (magazine), a Norwegian softcore pornographic magazine * Lek (pharmaceutical comp ...

while wagging its tail. It also makes a "rather monotonous 'tseet'" call.

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 sooty-capped hermit as being of Least Concern; though its population size is unknown it is believed to be stable. It is considered locally uncommon to common and seems "to adapt well to habitats modified by man".

References

External links

A photograph of a nest (Wikiaves) {{Taxonbar, from=Q1269968 Phaethornis, sooty-capped hermit Birds of the Colombian Andes Birds of Venezuela Birds of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Hummingbird species of South America sooty-capped hermit sooty-capped hermit Birds of the Tepuis