Chrysolampis moschitus
Habitat: Guiana, Cayenne, Brazil, Venezuela, the Andes of New Granada, and the islands of Trinidad and Tobago.
Plate 204
Chrysolampis moschitus
Ruby and Topaz
Dr. Cabanis is of opinion that the bird from New Granada is distinct from that obtained in the other localities; but I must receive more decided evidence that such is the case than I at present possess, before I can admit that there is any difference between the Andean and Brazilian examples; for the present, therefore, I place his name of C. Reichenbacht as a synonym of C. moschitus, which I believe to be the only species yet known of the genus.
This pretty little species [says Mr. Kirk] arrives in Tobago at the end of January or about the Ist of February. It begins to build about the 10th, lays two pure-white eggs, and sits. fourteen days. It feeds on ants as well as flowers. I detected 115 small insects in the stomach of one I dissected. One of these birds having attached its nest to the trunk of a logwood tree close to a window of my residence, I had an opportunity of observing its manners during incubation, and I can assert that, although I confined the young by means of some coarse wire cloth, through which the parent could feed them, for upwards of three weeks after they were ready to leave the nest, and although she evinced the greatest distress by her chirping note when flying around me, often within three feet, I never but twice, from the laying until the period I mention, saw a male near the nest; and whether they pair seems to be disputed, as on both these occasions he was hotly pursued by the female to a considerable distance with all the bickering violence so peculiar to the tribe.—Horæ Zoologicæ, by Sir. W. Jardine, Bart., in Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. xx. p. 373.
Featuring all 422 illustrated species from John Gould’s A Monograph of the Trochilidæ, or Family of Humming-Birds arranged by color.
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