Green Honeycreeper

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Green Honeycreeper

Conservation status
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Thraupidae
Genus: Chlorophanes
Species: C. spiza
Binomial name
Chlorophanes spiza
(Linnaeus, 1766)
The female Green Honeycreeper is paler, and lacks the male's iridescence and black head.
The female Green Honeycreeper is paler, and lacks the male's iridescence and black head.

The Green Honeycreeper, Chlorophanes spiza, is a small bird in the tanager family. It is found in the tropical New World from southern Mexico south to Brazil, and on Trinidad. It is monotypic, the only member of the genus Chlorophanes (Reichenbach, 1853).

This is a forest canopy species. 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.

The Green Honeycreeper is 14 cm long, weighs 17 g, and has a long decurved bill. The male is mainly blue-tinged green with a black head and a mostly bright yellow bill. Females and immatures are plumaged grass green, paler on the throat, and lack the black head. The call is a sharp chip.

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.

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