Purple honeycreeper

The purple honeycreeper (Cyanerpes caeruleus) is a small Neotropical bird in the family Thraupidae, the tanagers and allies. It is found in Panama, on Trinidad, and in every mainland South American country except Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

The purple honeycreeper is 9.3 to 11.4 cm (3.7 to 4.5 in) long and weighs 7.8 to 14 g (0.28 to 0.49 oz). The species is sexually dimorphic. Adult males of the nominate subspecies C. c. caeruleus are mostly violet-blue with a slightly lighter face. They have black lores and a narrow black mask to past the eye. The center of their throat is black. Their upperwing coverts, flight feathers, and tail are black. Adult females have a green crown and nape, buffy lores, a buffy eye-ring, a bright blue malar stripe, and a cinnamon-buff supercilium and ear coverts. Their upperparts and tail are green. Their throat is buffy, their breast and flanks off-white with greenish olive streaks, their belly a light yellow, and their undertail coverts white. Their flight feathers are dusky with variable amounts of yellow-green and green on the edges. Juveniles resemble adult females with somewhat plainer breast and flanks. Both sexes of all subspecies have a brown to black iris and a slender decurved black bill. Males have yellow legs and feet; females' are light green to olive-yellow.

The other subspecies of the purple honeycreeper differ from the nominate and each other thus:

C. c. chocoanus: slightly smaller than nominate with a shorter bill; males are a paler, less purple, blue; females have less streaking on the underparts

C. c. hellmayri: larger than nominate with significantly longer and heavier bill; males are violaceous-blue; females have a darker cinnamon-buff chin and throat, more greenish sides to the breast, and more brownish ear coverts

C. c. longirostris: longer bill than nominate; males are somewhat more purplish

C. c. microrhynchus: smaller than nominate with a shorter bill; males are less purplish and have a brighter blue crown