Bird Guide

Green Hermit vs Planalto Hermit

Green Hermit (Phaethornis guy)

Green Hermit

Phaethornis guy

Tiny6 gForest

It is 13.5 cm (5.3 in) long and weighs 6.3 g (0.22 oz). The male is mainly dark green with a blue-green rump. It has a dark mask through the eye, with buff stripes above and below this, and down the centre of the throat. The central feathers of the tapered tail are—for large hermit—relatively short and white-tipped, and are wiggled in display at the communal leks. The reddish bill is long and decurved. The female is sooty gray (rather than green) below, with an even longer bill and a much longer tail. The call of this species is a loud zurk, and the males' lekking "song" is a repeated swark.

ID text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Sonogram of the Green Hermit
Recorded by Niels Krabbe · Song, lek song · Napo: Napo Galeras, Ecuador · CC BY-SA 4.0
Photo: Eric Chan from Hollywood, United States · CC BY 2.0
Planalto Hermit (Phaethornis pretrei)

Planalto Hermit

Phaethornis pretrei

Tiny6 gWoodland

The planalto hermit is about 14 to 16.5 cm (5.5 to 6.5 in) long. Males weigh 4.5 to 7 g (0.16 to 0.25 oz) and females 3 to 5 g (0.11 to 0.18 oz). This medium-sized hermit has mostly olive green upperparts with reddish uppertail coverts. The next-to-inner tail feathers are longer than the others and all have white tips. Their underparts are cinnamon red. The face has a black "mask" with a white supercilium and gular stripe. The sexes are similar but the female has shorter wings and a less strongly decurved bill. Voice: The planalto hermit's song is variable, "often a sequence of evenly-spaced, alternating, single and double notes, e.g. 'ti-tsi...tsi...tsi...tsi...ti-tsi...tsi..tsi', but also sometimes triple-noted phrases such as 'chu-tsi-tsi...chu-tsi-tsi...chu-tsi-tsi...'."

ID text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Thomaz de Carvalho Callado · CC BY 4.0

Where you might meet both

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Photos and recordings are credited to their authors under the licence shown. Full profiles: Green Hermit and Planalto Hermit.