Lemon-chested Greenlet

About the Lemon-chested Greenlet

The lemon-chested greenlet (Hylophilus thoracicus) is a species of bird in the family Vireonidae, the vireos, greenlets, and shrike-babblers. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.

The lemon-chested greenlet's taxonomy is unsettled. The IOC, the Clements taxonomy, AviList, and the independent South American Classification Committee assign it these three subspecies: H. t. aemulus (Hellmayr, 1920) H. t. griseiventris Berlepsch & Hartert, EJO, 1902

H. t. thoracicus Temminck, 1822 However, BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) treats H. t. thoracicus as the Rio de Janeiro greenlet and, confusingly, the other two as the lemon-chested greenlet.

This article follows the IOC et al. one species, three-subspecies, model. The lemon-chested greenlet is 10 to 13 cm (3.9 to 5.1 in) long and weighs 11 to 14 g (0.39 to 0.49 oz). The sexes have the same plumage. Adults of the nominate subspecies H. t. thoracicus have an ochraceous olive forehead, a dull grayish olive crown, and a wide grayish nape collar. They have grayish lores and sides of the head with a... Wikipedia →