Yellow-fronted Panoplites
Ecuador and New Granada
In all probability the first example of this bird which reached this country was the one forwarded to me direct from Popayan in 1830. It was from this specimen that Mr. Loddiges took his description of the species, which appeared in the Proceedings of the Committee of Science and Correspondence of the Zoological Society for 1832.
That the bird enjoys a wide range of habitat is evidenced by the circumstance of its being found in more or less abundance in various and distant localities along the line of the Western Andes: thus, as already mentioned, I have myself received it from Popayan; M. Bourcier met with it in Ecuador; it is one of the commonest of the numerous species sent from Bogota; and that it inhabits countries still farther north, we know from the circumstance of M. Warszewicz having collected specimens near the Isthmus of Panama. Mr. Mark, Her Majesty’s Consul at Bogota, informs me that it is found about two days’ journey from that city, particularly near the villages of Guaduas and Fusugasuga, and that it is very generally dispersed over this elevated region at an altitude of from three thousand five hundred to six thousand feet above the sea-level, where the thermometer ranges from seventy to eighty degrees.
The Panoplites flavescens is one of the commonest of the Andean Humming Birds that is sent to Europe. Differences occasionally occur in the colouring of the specimens we receive, some having the crown and throat splendid metallic greenish yellow, relieved by a darker olive-green hue on the neck and chest, and other specimens, probably younger birds, having a lighter and more uniform cast of plumage. In form the bird is precisely like the P. Jardinei, and, as will be seen on comparing the figures of the two species, has a similarly marked and lightly coloured tail. I have not been able to detect any difference in the colouring of the sexes, and I believe they are only to be distinguished by actual dissection.
Crown of the head and throat luminous yellowish green; plumage of the upper and under surface and wing-coverts dark green; wings brownish purple; under surface of the shoulder and the axille rufous; vent buffy white; thighs clothed with somewhat lengthened white feathers; central tail-feathers greenish bronze, the remainder delicate buff, broadly margined externally and round the tip with greenish bronze; bill black.
The figures are of the natural size.
Featuring all 422 illustrated species from John Gould’s A Monograph of the Trochilidæ, or Family of Humming-Birds arranged by color.
Humming-Birds
