Purple Honeycreeper

The purple honeycreeper is 9.3 to 11.4 cm (3.7 to 4.5 in) long and weighs 7.8 to 14 g (0.28 to 0.49 oz). The species is sexually dimorphic. Adult males of the nominate subspecies C. c. caeruleus are mostly violet-blue with a slightly lighter face. They have black lores and a narrow black mask to past the eye. The center of their throat is black. Their upperwing coverts, flight feathers, and tail are black. Adult females have a green crown and nape, buffy lores, a buffy eye-ring, a bright blue malar stripe, and a cinnamon-buff supercilium and ear coverts. Their upperparts and tail are green. Their throat is buffy, their breast and flanks off-white with greenish olive streaks, their belly a light yellow, and their undertail coverts white. Their flight feathers are dusky with variable amounts of yellow-green and green on the edges. Juveniles resemble adult females with somewhat plainer breast and flanks. Both sexes of all subspecies have a brown to black iris and a slender decurved black bill. Males have yellow legs and feet; females' are light green to olive-yellow. The other subspecies of the purple honeycreeper differ from the nominate and each other thus:

C. c. chocoanus: slightly smaller than nominate with a shorter bill; males are a paler, less purple, blue; females have less streaking on the underparts C. c. …

The purple honeycreeper has a disjunct distribution. The subspecies are found thus:

C. c. chocoanus: from extreme eastern Panama in Darién Province south along the Pacific slope of Colombia and Ecuador to El Oro Province C. c. caeruleus: from the eastern slope of Colombia's [[Cordillera Oriental (Colombia) |Eastern Andes]] into Venezuela's Falcón; the Venezuelan Coastal Ranges from Carabobo east to Sucre and Delta Amacuro; Venezuela's eastern Amazonas and most of Bolívar states and across the Guianas and north-central Brazil to the Tapajós River and northwestern Maranhão state

C. c. hellmayri: Guyana's Potaro Highlands C. c. longirostris: Trinidad C. c. microrhynchus: Venezuela's western and southern Zulia, western Andean base in Táchira and Mérida, and eastern Andean base from Táchira to Lara; south of the Orinoco River in Venezuela's western Amazonas south through the southeastern third of Colombia, eastern Ecuador, and eastern Peru into northern Bolivia; east from that north-south line in Amazonian Brazil into Mato Grosso The purple honeycreeper inhabits several types of evergreen forest in the lowlands and foothills. In the Amazon Basin it occurs in both terra firme and várzea forest. It also occurs in clearings within the forest, secondary forest, and the ecotone between evergreen forest and less fertile savanna, cerrado, and white-sand landscapes. …

The purple honeycreeper feeds primarily on arthropods including insects and spiders, and also includes significant amounts of fruit and nectar in its diet. Fruit and nectar are sourced from a very wide variety of plants and the species is "considered very important pollinators and seed dispersers". Its bill shape allows it to take nectar from bromeliads and fleshy arils from plants such as Clusia rosea. At the Asa Wright Nature Center on Trinidad it readily feeds on nectar from hummingbird feeders and on banana and papaya on tray feeders. The species forages actively, primarily in the forest subcanopy and canopy. They typically forage in pairs or family groups and often join mixed-species feeding flocks. In one study they took most insect prey from small twigs and lesser amounts from leaves, flowers, and in mid-air.