Mrs Gould's Sunbird

About the Mrs Gould's Sunbird

Mrs. Gould's sunbird (Aethopyga gouldiae) is a sunbird species native to forests and shrublands from the southern foothills of the Himalayas to Southeast Asia. Mrs. Gould's sunbird was formally described in 1831 as Cinnyris gouldiae by the Irish zoologist Nicholas Vigors based on a specimen that John Gould had received from India. The specific epithet was chosen to honour the bird artist Elizabeth Gould who had drawn a plate of the bird for publication in the book A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains. Vigors specified the type locality as the Himalayas but this was restricted to the Silma-Almora district (Almora to Shimla in India) by Claud Ticehurst and Hugh Whistler in 1924. Mrs. Gould's sunbird is now one of 21 species placed in the genus Aethopyga that was introduced in 1851 by the German ornithologist Jean Cabanis.

Four subspecies are recognised: A. g. gouldiae (Vigors, NA, 1831) – Himalayas (Sutlej Valley to Arunachal Pradesh and southeastern Tibet) A. g. isolata Baker, ECS, 1925 – southern Assam to Bangladesh and western Myanmar (Chin Hills)

A. g. dabryii (Verreaux, JP, 1867) – western China (Xinjiang to Sichuan and Yunnan) to Myanmar and northern Laos... Wikipedia →