White-bearded hermit

Appearance

The white-bearded hermit is about 13 to 14 cm long and weighs 4 to 6 g . This medium-sized hermit has bronzy green upperparts with gray margins on the uppertail coverts. The underparts are gray. The face has a black "mask" with a white supercilium and malar stripe; the center of the throat has a white stripe. The female has identical plumage but shorter wings and a shorter and more decurved bill than the male.

Distribution

The white-bearded hermit is found in Amazonia, from the Andean foothills of western and southern Venezuela south through eastern Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru to northeastern Bolivia, and east throughout western Amazonian Brazil. In elevation it usually ranges as high as 850 m but has been recorded up to 1,200 m in Peru. It is a bird of humid landscapes. In the lowlands it mostly inhabits regularly inundated areas, such as along rivers and in ''várzea'' forest. At higher elevations if favors gallery forest in the cerrado and llanos.

Status

The IUCN has assessed the white-bearded hermit as being of Least Concern though its population size is unknown and believed to be decreasing. It occurs in several protected areas and its "[w]ide distribution and adaptability probably mean that species is not threatened."

Habitat

The white-bearded hermit is found in Amazonia, from the Andean foothills of western and southern Venezuela south through eastern Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru to northeastern Bolivia, and east throughout western Amazonian Brazil. In elevation it usually ranges as high as 850 m but has been recorded up to 1,200 m in Peru. It is a bird of humid landscapes. In the lowlands it mostly inhabits regularly inundated areas, such as along rivers and in ''várzea'' forest. At higher elevations if favors gallery forest in the cerrado and llanos.

Reproduction

The breeding seasons of the white-bearded hermit vary throughout its large range but have not been defined in detail. Like many hermits, it builds a cone-shaped nest suspended from the underside of drooping leaf. The clutch size is two eggs.


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Songs and calls


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Food

The white-bearded hermit is a "trap-line" feeder like other hermit hummingbirds, visiting a circuit of a wide variety of flowering plants for nectar. It also consumes small arthropods.