Gray-tailed Mountain-gem

About the Gray-tailed Mountain-gem

The white-throated mountaingem or white-throated mountain-gem (Lampornis castaneoventris) is a species of hummingbird in tribe Lampornithini of subfamily Trochilinae. It is endemic to the highlands of Costa Rica and Panama.

The white-throated mountaingem was formally described in 1851 by the English ornithologist John Gould based on a specimen collected by the Polish botanist Józef Warszewicz at an altidude of 1,800 m (6,000 ft) in the Cordillera de Chiriquí of western Panama. Gould coined the binomial name Trichilus castaneoventris where the specific epithet combines the Latin castaneus meaning "chestnut-brown" with venter, ventris meaning "belly". The white-throated mountaingem is now one of seven species placed in the genus Lampornis that was introduced in 1827 by the English zoologist William Swainson.

Two subspecies are recognised: L. c. cinereicauda (Lawrence, GN, 1867) – southern Costa Rica (Cordillera de Talamanca) L. c. castaneoventris (Gould, J, 1851) – montane forest of far western Panama The subspecies L. c. cinereicauda has sometimes been considered a separate species, the gray-tailed mountaingem. In 1999 Karl-Ludwig Schuchmann in the Handbook of Birds of... Wikipedia →