Howdy, friends.  Our bird this week was suggested by the inimitable Frodo, of House Corleone.  The purple honeycreeper is an itty-bitty member of the tanager family and widely distributed throughout Central and South America.  It lives in Panama, on Trinidad, and is found in every South American country except Argentina, Chile and Paraguay and Uruguay.  It lives in lowlands and foothills, at relatively tame elevations compared to some of the other birds we have talked about recently, especially the wallcreeper from last week.  The purple honeycreeper tops out at 1,800 m (5,900 ft), specifically in Venezuela, south of the Orinoco River.  Throughout its range, the honeycreeper lives in evergreen and deciduous forests, as well as varzea, the specific kind of Amazonian forest that seasonally floods.  It appears to be fairly comfortbale with humans, as it is also found in gardens, plantations, and at forest edges.  

Although I haven’t been keeping track, this might be one of the smallest birds we have covered, although I feel like there has been a header about another kind of honeycreeper.  Adults are 9.3 to 11.4 cm (3.7 to 4.5 in) long and weigh 7.8 to 14 g (0.28 to 0.49 oz).  The birds are very sexualy dimorphic, but rather than paraphrase a bunch of Wikipedia, I’ll be including and labeling pictures.  Adult males and females look very different and juvenile males have a whole other thing going on.    

The purple honeycreeper is a resident throughout its range, only moving short distances seasonally with the availability of food.  It eats arthorpods and lots of fruit and nectar, and is considered an important polinator and disperser of seeds.  It forages alone or in pairs, but has been known to join mixed flocks.  Breeding season varies, as the bird’s range encompasses several climates and biomes.  It makes a small cup-shaped nest out of moss and roots.  The female broods over the eggs alone, but both parents will care for the chicks once they hatch.  

The purple honeycreeper is considered “of least concern” by the IUCN.  It has a range of nearly nine million square kilometers and is thought to number at least five million individuals.  That does it for me, its been a long day.  Be good to yourselves and others.  

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