The red-legged honeycreeper (Cyanerpes cyaneus) is a small songbird species in the tanager family (Thraupidae). It is found in the tropical New World from southern Mexico south to Peru, Bolivia and central Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, and on Cuba, where possibly introduced. It is also rarely found in southern Texas.
Taxonomy
The red-legged honeycreeper was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1766 in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Certhia cyanea. Linnaeus based his description on "The Black and Blue Creeper" that had been described and illustrated in 1760 by the English naturalist George Edwards from a specimen collected in Suriname. The red-legged honeycreeper is now placed in the genus Cyanerpes that was introduced in 1899 by the American ornithologist Harry C. Oberholser. The specific epithet cyaneus is a Latin word meaning "dark-blue".
Eleven subspecies are recognised: fruit
A specimen studied in the Parque Nacional de La Macarena of Colombia was found to be free of blood parasites.
External links
- from British Honduras (now Belize), Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Paraguay & Suriname at
- Trip Report from birdtours.co.uk featuring a Red-legged honeycreeper photo