Beautiful Sunbird

About the Beautiful Sunbird

The beautiful sunbird (Cinnyris pulchellus), formerly placed in the genus Nectarinia, is a small passerine bird in the sunbird family Nectariniidae. It is native to tropical Africa, its range extending from Senegal and Guinea in the west to Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya in the east. It was formerly considered to be conspecific with the gorgeous sunbird (Cinnyris melanogastrus).

The beautiful sunbird was formally described in 1766 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Certhia pulchella. Linnaeus based his account on "Le grimpereau à longue queue du Sénégal" that had been described and illustrated in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. The specific epithet is from Latin pulchellum meaning "very pretty" or "beautiful little". Formerly placed in the genus Nectarinia, the beautiful sunbird is now one of 64 sunbirds placed in the genus Cinnyris that was introduced in 1816 by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier. It was previously considered to be conspecific with the gorgeous sunbird (Cinnyris melanogastrus) but the species were split based on the differences in morphology... Wikipedia →