Scrub Greenlet

About the Scrub Greenlet

The scrub greenlet (Hylophilus flavipes) is a small passerine bird in the family Vireonidae, the vireos, greenlets, and shrike-babblers. It is found in Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Tobago, and Venezuela. The scrub greenlet's taxonomy is unsettled. The IOC, the Clements taxonomy, AviList, and the independent South American Classification Committee assign it these seven subspecies:

H. f. viridiflavus Lawrence, 1861 H. f. xuthus Wetmore, 1957 H. f. flavipes Lafresnaye, 1845 H. f. melleus Wetmore, 1941 H. f. galbanus Wetmore & Phelps, WH Jr, 1956 H. f. acuticaudus Lawrence, 1865 H. f. insularis Sclater, PL, 1861

However, BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) treats H. f. viridiflavus and H. f. xuthus as the "yellow-green greenlet" and H. f. insularis as the "Tobago greenlet". It retains the English name "scrub greenlet" for H. flavipes and the other three subspecies. Clements does recognize these taxa as distinctive within the full species, calling them the "scrub greenlet (yellow-green)", "scrub greenlet (Tobago)" and "scrub greenlet (scrub)". The North American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society... Wikipedia →