Pale-tailed Barbthroat

About the Pale-tailed Barbthroat

The pale-tailed barbthroat (Threnetes leucurus) is a species of hummingbird in the family Trochilidae. It is found throughout much of the Amazon Basin from the eastern Andean foothills to the Atlantic Ocean. The pale-tailed barbthroat was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1766 in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Trochilus leucurus. Linnaeus based his short description on the "white-tailed humming-bird" that had been described and illustrated by the English naturalist George Edwards in 1758. The type locality is Suriname. The specific epithet is from the Ancient Greek leukouros meaning "white-tailed". The pale-tailed barbthroat is now placed in the genus Threnetes that was introduced in 1852 by the English ornithologist John Gould.

Four subspecies are recognised: T. l. cervinicauda Gould, 1855 T. l. rufigastra Cory, 1915 T. l. leucurus (Linnaeus, 1766) T. l. medianus Hellmayr, 1929 The taxonomy of the pale-tailed and sooty barbthroat (T. niger) complex is unsettled. The two were originally described as separate species, then combined under the name pale-tailed barbthroat but with the binomial... Wikipedia →