Stripe-breasted Starthroat

Characterized by an elongate, straight black bill measuring up to 35 mm in length, this medium-sized starthroat reaches an overall body length between 11 and 12.5 cm, with a typical mass ranging from 5 to 6.5 g. The adult male features bronzy-green upperparts with warm metallic reflections, blending into a brighter emerald green on the forecrown. Its most dramatic ornamental feature is a brilliant iridescent magenta-violet gorget, bordered beneath the eye by a prominent white moustachial stripe. The ventral surface is distinctive, showing dark grayish-green to blackish underparts cleanly bisected by a longitudinal white median stripe that extends through the breast and belly, creating an unmistakable scaled pattern along the dark flanks. The adult female lacks the luminous throat gorget, presenting instead a whitish throat heavily stippled with dark dusky disks or scales. Both sexes display stark white postocular spots, small rictal markings, and conspicuous white tufts across the lower flanks.

Geographical distribution: This trochilid is endemic to central and eastern Brazil. Its geographical range spans across vast portions of the continent, from the northeastern states of Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Pernambuco, and Bahia, moving centrally through Tocantins, Goiás, the Distrito Federal, and eastern Mato Grosso, down to southeastern regions including Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, and northern sectors of São Paulo.

Habitat: Found predominantly across the open, structurally heterogeneous biomes characteristic of South America´s dry diagonal, showing high affinities for the Cerrado and the semi-arid scrub of the Caatinga. It frequents wooded savannas, dry deciduous woodlands, gallery forest peripheries, rocky montane grasslands (campos rupestres), and degraded secondary growth. It also colonizes anthropic environments, regularly foraging in rural agricultural landscapes, orchards, pastures with scattered tree cover, and suburban gardens hosting diverse nectar sources.

Feeding: Its nutritional ecology relies heavily on floral nectar complemented by the opportunistic consumption of small soft-bodied invertebrates. It forages across diverse plant families including Fabaceae, Bromeliaceae, Bignoniaceae, and Malvaceae, inserting its elongated bill deep into tubular corollas either through sustained hovering flight or by briefly perching adjacent to large inflorescences. To satisfy its protein requirements, it engages in aerial sallying or hawking from high perches to intercept airborne insects, and gleans spiders, homopterans, and small dipterans directly from bark fissures and leaves.

Behavior: Highly solitary in nature, individuals exhibit strong agonistic behaviors and territorial defenses around dense, rewarding floral aggregations. It possesses the distinctive habit of utilizing very high, completely unobstructed vantage points, perching stoically atop dead emergent branches, utility lines, and tall shrubs. From these perches, it monitors its foraging territory and swoops down rapidly to chase off encroaching hummingbirds. Its flight is direct and swift, accompanied by high-pitched, metallic chipping vocalizations used during intraspecific territorial encounters.

Nesting: Breeding coincides primarily with the onset of the regional rainy season. The female undertakes all reproductive responsibilities without male assistance, constructing a delicate, compact cup nest placed upon a horizontal branch or fork. Construction materials include soft plant down, thistle pappus, and fibrous rootlets bound securely with abundant spider silk, which allows the cup to expand as the brood develops. The exterior is camouflaged using foliose lichens and flakes of bark to blend with surrounding vegetation. The clutch size consists invariably of two white eggs, which are incubated solely by the female for 15 to 17 days. The altricial nestlings are brooded and provisioned via crop regurgitation, ultimately fledging between 20 and 24 days after hatching.

Conservation status: Categorized as Least Concern (LC) on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Despite severe deforestation and landscape conversion affecting the Cerrado and Caatinga due to mechanized agriculture and livestock pasture expansion, the species occupies an extremely large geographic range and tolerates moderate habitat fragmentation, ensuring overall population viability.