Red-legged honeycreeper

Appearance

The red-legged honeycreeper is on average 12.2 cm long, weighs 14 g and has a medium-long black, slightly decurved, bill. The male is violet-blue with black wings, tail and back, and bright red legs. The crown of its head is turquoise, and the underwing, visible only in flight, is lemon yellow. After the breeding season, the male moults into an eclipse plumage, mainly greenish with black wings.

Females and immatures are mainly green, with paler, faintly streaked underparts. The legs are red-brown in the female, and brown in young birds.

The call of red-legged honeycreeper is a thin, high-pitched ''tsip''.

Several subspecies are known. Differences are generally slight, with the Tobago race '' C. c. tobagensis'' being slightly larger than the mainland forms for example.

The purplish honeycreeper , a bird from Venezuela known only from the type specimen, is considered to be an intergeneric hybrid between the green honeycreeper and either the red-legged honeycreeper or the blue dacnis.

Habitat

This is a species of forest edge, open woodland, and cocoa and citrus plantations. The red-legged honeycreeper is often found in small groups. It feeds on insects and some fruit and nectar. It responds readily to the call of the ferruginous pygmy owl .

The female red-legged honeycreeper builds a small cup nest in a tree, and incubates the clutch of two brown-blotched white eggs for 12–13 days, with a further 14 days to fledging.

A specimen studied in the Parque Nacional de La Macarena of Colombia was found to be free of blood parasites.

Common and widespread, the red-legged honeycreeper is not considered a threatened species by the IUCN.