Sooty-capped Hermit

The sooty-capped hermit is about 14 to 15 cm (5.5 to 5.9 in) long. Males weigh 4.5 to 6 g (0.16 to 0.21 oz) and females 4 to 5 g (0.14 to 0.18 oz). They are mostly grayish brown above with a rufous rump and uppertail coverts. The next-to-inner tail feathers are longer than the others and all have white tips. Their underparts are gray. The face has a black "mask" with a white supercilium and gular stripe. The subspecies differ slightly in the intensity of the breast and uppertail covert colors and the size of the gular stripe. What was once thought to be a separate species P. fumosus was determined to be a melanistic morph of the nominate sooty-capped hermit.

Major taxonomic systems place the nominate subspecies of sooty-capped hermit in Venezuela's Coastal Range and eastern Andes and south on the eastern slope of Colombia's Eastern Andes; P. a. curiosus in the isolated Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta of northeastern Colombia; and P. a incanescens on the tepuis of southern Venezuela, western Guyana, and Brazil's Roraima state. The South American Classification Committee (SACC) of the American Ornithological Society places the species in those four countries and also French Guiana and Suriname.

The sooty-capped hermit is a "trap-line" feeder like other hermit hummingbirds, visiting a circuit of flowering plants for nectar. It also consumes small arthropods, and has been observed catching them in buildings.