Fawn-breasted Brilliant

About the Fawn-breasted Brilliant

The fawn-breasted brilliant (Heliodoxa rubinoides) is a medium-sized species of hummingbird in the family Trochilidae. It is native to South America, where it occurs in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Other common names include lilac-throated brilliant in English and brillante pechigamuza, colibrí de vientre ocre, and diamante pechigamuza in Spanish.

The fawn-breasted brilliant was originally described as Trochilus rubinoides by French naturalists Jules Bourcier and Étienne Mulsant in 1846, with the type locality given as Colombia. It was later moved to the genus Heliodoxa, which was introduced by John Gould in 1850. The genus name Heliodoxa derives from the Greek words hēlios ("sun") and doxa ("glory"), while the specific epithet rubinoides combines the Latin rubinus ("ruby-red") with the Greek suffix -oidēs ("resembling"), referring to the male's pink throat patch.

There are three recognized subspecies: Heliodoxa rubinoides rubinoides (Bourcier & Mulsant, 1846) – Central and Eastern Andes of Colombia. Heliodoxa rubinoides aequatorialis (Gould, 1860) – Western slope of the Andes from western Colombia (Antioquia) south to western Ecuador (Pichincha to El Oro and... Wikipedia →