Violet-crowned flag sylph
| Violet-crowned flag sylph | ||||||||||
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Violet-crowned flag sylph (illustration by John Gould) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||
| Loddigesia | ||||||||||
| Bonaparte , 1850 | ||||||||||
| Scientific name of the species | ||||||||||
| Loddigesia mirabilis | ||||||||||
| ( Bourcier , 1847) |
The violet-crowned flag sylph ( Loddigesia mirabilis ), also known as miracle sylph , is a species of hummingbird from the monotypical genus Loddigesia . It is endemic to the mountain forests of northern Peru .
description
The violet-crowned flag sylph reaches a length of 15 to 17 centimeters in the males and 9 to 10 centimeters in the females. Of this, 11 to 13 centimeters in the male and 5 to 7 centimeters in the female fall on the tail. The weight is about three grams. In the male, the reins, the skull and the feather bonnet are glittering purple. The top is shiny metallic green. The buttocks are more shimmering bronze. The middle pair of control springs is greenish bronze and darker at the tip. The lateral control springs are characteristic. They are black and extend towards the tip in elongated, dark, shiny purple-blue flags. The chin and throat feathers are bluish green with a shimmering golden edge. The underside is brownish-white with a dark bronze-colored central stripe. The belly and the flanks are metallic green. The under tail coverts are bronze green, the elongated pair having a fine white tip. The black beak is slightly curved. In the female, the top is shiny metallic green. The top of the head is duller and darker. The middle pair of control springs is metallic green at the root and dark steel blue from the middle to the tip. The outermost pair of control springs is dark gray-brown, the widened tip is steel blue. The underside is white to light rust-brown. The neck and flanks are shiny metallic green. The under tail-coverts are brownish-white. In the female, the throat markings and the flags on the tail feathers are missing. The immature birds resemble the female. The immature male has a partially developed throat markings, a black center line on the belly and black flags on the tail feathers.
Occurrence
The occurrence of the violet- crowned flag sylph is on the eastern slopes of the Utcubamba valley in the Cordillera del Colán in the province of Chachapoyas , on the surroundings of Jesús del Monte in the province of San Martín and on the shores of Lake Pomacochas in the district of Florida in the province of Bongará limited.
habitat
The violet crown booted racket-tail comes along forest edges, in secondary forests and of Rubus - thicket dominated montane bushland in open terrain in steep valleys and ravines at altitudes from 2100 to 2900 meters before.
food
The diet consists of the nectar of flowering Rubus plants, Bomarea formosissima and Satureja sericea . When looking for food, certain forage plants are regularly approached. The violet-crowned flag sylph sits down to drink nectar instead of hovering before flowering like other hummingbird species .
Reproduction
Little is known about the breeding behavior of the violet-crowned flag sylph. The mating season lasts from October to May.
The long tail feathers play an essential role in courtship. If the males courted from a hide, they can tilt their tail feathers forward so that they dance in front of their chest. At the height of the courtship they fly up from the raised hide and quickly sit down again. In doing so, they move their tail feathers so quickly that the birds are reminiscent of a rapidly rotating top. This effect is further enhanced because the males court in leks and several males display their flight feathers at the same time.
status
The violet-crowned flag sylph was discovered in 1836 by Andrew Matthews, a bird collector who worked for naturalist George Loddiges . Jules Bourcier first described the type specimen under the name Trochilus mirabilis and the species was only later added to the genus Loddigesia . The male, collected by Matthews, formed the basis for Henry Constantine Richter's lithograph in John Gould's A Monograph of the Trochilidae, or Family of Humming-birds (1849-87). After a last sighting in 1880 by the Polish ornithologist Jan Sztolcman , the species was rediscovered in 1962 by the Brazilian naturalist Augusto Ruschi (1915–1986) in a valley of the Utcubamba . In the 1970s and 1980s, ornithologist Theodore Albert Parker III carried out investigations into the habitat of the violet-crowned flag sylph. He came to the conclusion that there are more females than males and calculated a gender ratio of 5 to 1. In 2000, the American ornithologist James Hecht made the first film recordings of the violet-crowned flag sylph. The species has a very small range. About 250 to 1000 specimens live in an area of 110 km². Deforestation is widespread on the slopes of the Cordillera del Colán. Large areas of forest in the habitat of the violet-crowned flag sylph have been cleared since 1978 and the remaining forest is endangered by the cultivation of hemp and coffee . Conversations with Florida residents have also revealed that the males' dried hearts are used as an aphrodisiac. The hunt for the males, which is carried out with slingshots, could also explain the poor sex ratio.
etymology
Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte introduced the new genus »Loddigesia« in 1850. He chose the name in honor of George Loddiges (1786–1846), whom he erroneously named as the first author, since the type specimen came from his natural history cabinet. "Mirabilis" is the Latin word for "admirable, wonderful".
literature
- Dominic Couzens : Rare Birds - Survivors, Evolution Losers and the Lost. Haupt Verlag, Bern 2011, ISBN 978-3-258-07629-4 .
- Richard L. Garrigues: Is Marvelous Spatuletail Loddigesia mirabilis threatened by hunting? . Cotinga 14: p. 13.2000 . ISSN 1353-985X
- James F. Clements and Noam Shany: A field guide to the birds of Peru . Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. 2001. ISBN 0-934797-18-8
- J. Del Hoyo, A. Elliot, J. Sargatal (Eds.): Handbook of the Birds of the World . Volume 5: Barn-Owls to Hummingbirds. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. 1999. ISBN 84-87334-25-3
- James A. Jobling: Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names . Christopher Helm, London 2010, ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4 .
- Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte: Conspectus generum avium . tape 1 . EJ Brill, Leiden 1850 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
- Jules Bourcier: Description de quinze espèces de Trochilidées du Cabinet de M. Loddiges . In: Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London . tape 15 , no. 171 , 1847, pp. 42-47 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
- Władysław Taczanowski, Jan Sztolcman: Notice sur la Loddigesia mirabilis (Bourc.) . In: Proceedings of the Scientific Meetings of the Zoological Society of London for the Year 1881 . 1881, p. 827-834 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
- Augusto Ruschi: Os movimentos controlados das retrizes exteriores em Loddigesia mirabilis (Bourcier) eo estalido produido pelo macho . In: Boletim Museu Biol. Prof. "Mello Leitão" Santa Teresa (= Biologia ). No. 44 , 1964, pp. 1–4 ( boletim.sambio.org.br [PDF; 133 kB ]).
Web links
- Loddigesia mirabilis inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2014.2. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved June 29, 2014.
- BirdLife International: Species Factsheet - Marvelous Spatuletail ( Loddigesia mirabilis ) . Retrieved June 29, 2014.
- Videos, photos and sound recordings on Marvelous Spatuletail (Loddigesia mirabilis) in the Internet Bird Collection
- Violet-crowned flag sylph ( Loddigesia mirabilis ) at Avibase; Retrieved June 29, 2014.
- Loddigesia mirabilis in the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS)
- xeno-canto: Sound recordings - Marvelous Spatuletail ( Loddigesia mirabilis )
- Marvelous spatuletail (Loddigesia mirabilis) in the Encyclopedia of Life . Retrieved on August 19, 2019.
- Photos of the kind