Purple Honeycreeper

About the Purple Honeycreeper

The purple honeycreeper (Cyanerpes caeruleus) is a small Neotropical bird in the family Thraupidae, the tanagers and allies. It is found in Panama, on Trinidad, and in every mainland South American country except Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

The purple honeycreeper was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae with the binomial Certhia caerulea. Linnaeus based his description on "The Blue Creeper" that had been described and illustrated in 1743 by the English naturalist George Edwards from specimens collected in Suriname. The specimens had been mounted in glass cases and were owned by the Duke of Richmond. The purple honeycreeper was reassigned to the genus Cyanerpes by the American ornithologist Harry C. Oberholser

when he erected the genus in 1899. The specific epithet caeruleus is Latin for "dark blue". The purple honeycreeper has these five subspecies: C. c. chocoanus Hellmayr, 1920 C. c. caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) C. c. hellmayri Gyldenstolpe, 1945

C. c. longirostris (Cabanis, 1851) C. c. microrhynchus (Berlepsch, 1884) The purple honeycreeper is 9... Wikipedia →