Gray-breasted Sabrewing

About the Gray-breasted Sabrewing

The grey-breasted sabrewing (Campylopterus largipennis) is a species of hummingbird in the "emeralds", tribe Trochilini of subfamily Trochilinae. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, the Guianas, Peru, and Venezuela.

The grey-breasted sabrewing 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. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored 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. 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 largipennis in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The grey-breasted sabrewing is now placed in the genus Campylopterus that was erected by the English naturalist William Swainson in 1827. The generic name combines the Ancient Greek kampulos meaning "curved" or "bent" and -pteros meaning "-winged". The specific epithet largipennis combines the... Wikipedia →