Hummingbirds World
Purple-backed Thornbill
Photo: Ron Knight from Seaford, East Sussex, United Kingdom · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Purple-backed Thornbill

Ramphomicron microrhynchum (Boissonneau, 1840)

Spanish: Colibrí Piquicorto Común

The Purple-backed Thornbill (Ramphomicron microrhynchum) is a hummingbird in the subfamily Lesbiinae (coquettes and brilliants), tribe Lesbiini (coquettes). It weighs about 3.6 g and its bill is 11.1 mm long. It lives in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela and Bolivia. Its IUCN Red List status is Least concern, with a decreasing population.

See it in the explorer eBird page ↗

At a glance

Weight
3.6 g, about 4 paperclips
Bill
11.1 mm
Lives in
Forest
Moves
Stays put all year
Red List status
Least concern, decreasing

Its place in the family

  1. Family Trochilidae hummingbirds
  2. Subfamily Lesbiinae coquettes and brilliants
  3. Tribe Lesbiini coquettes
  4. Genus Ramphomicron thornbills

What Ramphomicron share: Very short bills.

Where it lives · 5 countries

Others in the genus Ramphomicron

Sources

Names: eBird/Clements Checklist (Cornell Lab of Ornithology). Groups: Dickinson & Remsen (2013) and McGuire et al. (2014). Weight, bill, habitat and movement: AVONET (Tobias et al. 2022, CC BY 4.0). Countries: BirdLife International DataZone, checked against eBird records via GBIF. Red List status and trend: BirdLife International, the IUCN Red List authority for birds.

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