Cyanerpes
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The true honeycreepers form a genus ''Cyanerpes'' of small birds in the tanager family
Thraupidae The tanagers (singular ) comprise the bird family (biology), family Thraupidae, in the order Passeriformes. The family has a Neotropical distribution and is the second-largest family of birds. It represents about 4% of all avian species and 12 ...
. They are found in the tropical
New World The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...
from Mexico south to Brazil. They occur in the forest canopy, and, as the name implies, they are specialist
nectar Nectar is a viscous, sugar-rich liquid produced by Plant, plants in glands called nectaries, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollination, pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to an ...
feeders with long curved bills. The four ''Cyanerpes'' species have colourful legs, long wings and a short tail. The males are typically glossy purple-blue and the females greenish.


Taxonomy and species list

The genus ''Cyanerpes'' was introduced in 1899 by the American ornithologist Harry C. Oberholser with the red-legged honeycreeper as the
type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...
. The name combines the
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
''kuanos'' meaning "dark-blue" and ''herpēs'' meaning "creeper". There are two other tanagers with honeycreeper in their common name: the green honeycreeper in the monospecific genus ''Chlorophanes'' and the golden-collared honeycreeper in the monospecific genus ''Iridophanes''. These two species are sister taxa and belong to the
subfamily In biological classification, a subfamily (Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end botanical subfamily names with "-oideae", and zo ...
Hemithraupinae rather than to Dacninae with the members of ''Cyanerpes''. The genus contains four species:


Eggs

A commonly repeated, yet false, belief about the various honeycreeper species is that some of them lay black eggs. This idea was first made known in the scientific community with the 1899 publication of Nehrkorn's egg catalog; Nehrkorn's claim was cited in ornithological literature for many years without verification, but by the 1940s it was established that none of the members of ''Cyanerpes'' lay such eggs.


References


External links


Honeycreeper videos, photos and sounds
on the Internet Bird Collection {{Authority control Taxa named by Harry C. Oberholser