Van Hasselt's Sunbird

About the Van Hasselt's Sunbird

Van Hasselt's sunbird (Leptocoma brasiliana), is a species of bird in the family Nectariniidae. It is found in Northeast India, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or tropical mangrove forests.

Van Hasselt's sunbird was described and illustrated in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. He introduced the French name "Le grimpereau violet de Brésil" in the mistakenly belief that his specimen had been collected in Brazil. When the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae in 1788 he included Van Hasselt's sunbird using Brisson's account. He placed it with the tree-creepers in the genus Certhia and coined the binomial name Certhia brasiliana. He specified the location as Brazil and cited Brisson's book. In 1825 the Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck described and illustrated Van Hasselt's sunbird based on a specimen that had been collected on the island of Java by Johan Conrad van Hasselt. Temminck coined the binomial name Nectarinia hasseltii, choosing the specific epithet to honour the collector. Under the rules of... Wikipedia →