Male Purple Honeycreeper

Sightings
The male Purple Honeycreeper is a stunning bird and a regular visitor to the feeders at the Asa Wright Centre in Trinidad. The unusual combination of bluish purple body, black eye mask, bright yellow legs and long decurved bill are especially attractive.

Species
Purple Honeycreeper Cyanerpes caeruleus is a bird of northern South America, the Amazon Basin and the Guianas, a coastal range occurs west of the Andes, including parts of southern Panama. In the south, its range extends to the extreme western Pantanal. It is most frequently seen in the lowlands up to 3,300 ft or so above sea level

Status and distribution
It is a species of least concern with a stable but unknown population in a large breeding range of almost nine million square kilometres. It is a common resident on Trinidad in forests and wooded estates but has not been recorded on Tobago in recent times. There are five subspecies of which C. c. longirostris is endemic to Trinidad and has a longer bill than the mainland forms.

References
Asa Wright Centre; BirdLife; Wikipedia; World Bird Names; Kenefick, M., Restall, R., and Hayes, F. (2015) Birds of Trinidad and Tobago, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 224

Photograph
Photographed in poor afternoon light at 1/1600th of a second, f5.6 and ISO 2500