Garden sunbird
species of bird
The garden sunbird (Cinnyris jugularis), previously known as the olive-backed sunbird, is a species of passerine bird in the family Nectariniidae that is found in the Philippines except on the Palawan island group. It was formerly considered to be conspecific with seven other species: the ornate sunbird, Palawan sunbird, Sahul sunbird, Tukangbesi sunbird, Flores Sea sunbird, South Moluccan sunbird and the Mamberamo sunbird.
It is a small, brightly coloured bird with olive-green plumage on the wings and back with a bright yellow chest. It has a long downward-curved bill it uses for taking nectar and capturing insects. It is primarily nectarivorous, but will take insects and spiders, particularly when feeding chicks.
Taxonomy
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the garden sunbird in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in the Philippines. He used the French name Le petit grimpereau des Philippines and the Latin Certhia Philippensis Minor. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the garden sunbird.
“Garden sunbird” enters the record as species of bird. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Garden, sunbird and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q766717. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1760 and 1766.
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This entry incorporates text from “Garden sunbird” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.