Green-throated mango

The green-throated mango (Anthracothorax viridigula) is a hummingbird that breeds from northeastern Venezuela, Trinidad and the Guianas south to northeasterm Brazil. In Brazil, the bird is only found on the narrow Atlantic coastal strip north and south of the Amazon River outlet, and a strip along the river proper, about 1500 km upstream. It is a local or seasonal migrant, although its movements are not well understood. This small bird inhabits mangrove swamp and moist lowland savannah.

Green-throated mango
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Apodiformes
Family: Trochilidae
Genus: Anthracothorax
Species:
A. viridigula
Binomial name
Anthracothorax viridigula
(Boddaert, 1783)

Taxonomy

The green-throated mango was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana.[2] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.[3] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Trochilus viridigula in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.[4] The green-throated mango is now placed in the genus Anthracothorax that was introduced by the German zoologist Friedrich Boie in 1831.[5][6] The species is monotypic.[6]

The generic name combines the Ancient Greek anthrax meaning "coal" (i.e. black) and thōrax meaning "chest". The specific epithet viridigula is from the Latin viridis meaning "green" and gula meaning "throat".[7]

Description

The green-throated mango is about 10.2 cm (4.0 in) in length and weighs 9 g (0.32 oz). The longish black bill is slightly decurved. The male has glossy bright green upperparts with a copper tinge, especially on the rump. His throat and underparts are green with a black central line on the breast and belly. The tail has dark central feathers, the outer tail being wine-red tipped with black. The female green-throated mango has more bronze on the upperparts and flanks. She has white underparts with a black central stripe. The tail has dark central feathers, the outer tail being wine-red tipped with white. Immature males resemble females but have chestnut sides.

This species is very similar to the closely related black-throated mango. Although the male green-throated mango has less extensive black on the underparts, this and other plumage differences are not always easy to confirm in the field because the birds appear all-black. The females of the two species can be almost inseparable, although green-throated has more extensively coppery upperparts than its relative.

The female green-throated mango lays two white eggs in a deep cup nest on a high, thin, and usually bare branch.

The food of this species is nectar, often taken from the flowers of large trees. This hummingbird is also notably insectivorous, often hovering in open areas to catch flying insects. The call of the green-throated mango is a staccato stony click.

References
  1. BirdLife International (2012). "Anthracothorax viridigula". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2013.
  2. Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de (1780). "Le colibri à cravate verte". Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux (in French). Volume 11. Paris: De L'Imprimerie Royale. p. 77.
  3. Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de; Martinet, François-Nicolas; Daubenton, Edme-Louis; Daubenton, Louis-Jean-Marie (1765–1783). "Colibri à gorge vert, de Cayenne". Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle. Volume 7. Paris: De L'Imprimerie Royale. Plate 671 Fig. 1.
  4. Boddaert, Pieter (1783). Table des planches enluminéez d'histoire naturelle de M. D'Aubenton : avec les denominations de M.M. de Buffon, Brisson, Edwards, Linnaeus et Latham, precedé d'une notice des principaux ouvrages zoologiques enluminés (in French). Utrecht. p. 41, Number 671 Fig. 1.
  5. Boie, Friedrich (1831). "Bemerkungen über Species und einige ornithologische Familien und Sippen". Isis von Oken (in German). 24. Cols 538–548 [545].
  6. Gill, Frank; Donsker, David, eds. (2019). "Hummingbirds". World Bird List Version 9.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 21 July 2019.
  7. Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. pp. 49, 403. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  • Hilty, Steven L (2003). Birds of Venezuela. London: Christopher Helm. ISBN 0-7136-6418-5.
  • ffrench, Richard (1991). A Guide to the Birds of Trinidad and Tobago (2nd ed.). Comstock Publishing. ISBN 0-8014-9792-2.


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