Green Honeycreeper (Chlorophanes spiza)

[order] Passeriformes | [family] Thraupidae | [latin] Chlorophanes spiza | [UK] Green Honeycreeper | [FR] Guit-guit emeraude | [DE] Kappennaschvogel | [ES] Mielero Verde | [IT] Clorofane verde | [NL] Groene Suikervogel

The female is apple green in colour with darker wings and straw yellow on the throat and on the belly. The bill is slightly decurved and is yellowish below. The iris is reddy-brown. In this particular flock, it could have been confused with the many female-plumaged Blue Dacnis until one noticed the distinctive bill and the lack of blue on the head. The male has a similar colour of pointed bill, bright yellow with a black culmen but is a bright emerald to bluish green. It also has a black face and crown and has a redder eye than the female.

It is found in the tropical New World from southern Mexico south to Brazil, and on Trinidad.

It favours forest and secondary woodland, normally high in the canopy but it comes out in clearings and forest edges

The female Green Honeycreeper builds a small cup nest in a tree, and incubates the clutch of two brown-blotched white eggs for 13 days.

They are found singly or in pairs and often in a mixed honeycreeper-tanager flocks. Feeding mainly on fruit they also look for nectar from flowers and occasionally eat insects. The Green Honeycreeper is less heavily dependent on nectar than the other honeycreepers, fruit being its main food (60%), with nectar (20%) and insects (15%) as less important components of its diet.

This species has a large range, with an estimated global Extent of Occurrence of 8,000,000 km². The global population size has not been quantified, but it is believed to be large as the species is described as ‘frequent’ in at least parts of its range (Stotz et al. 1996). Global population trends have not been quantified, but the species is not believed to approach the thresholds for the population decline criterion of the IUCN Red List (i.e. declining more than 30% in ten years or three generations). For these reasons, the species is evaluated as Least Concern.

Sedentary throughout range