Purple-throated Euphonia

The purple-throated euphonia is 9 to 10 cm (3.5 to 3.9 in) long and weighs about 8 to 14 g (0.28 to 0.49 oz). The species is sexually dimorphic. Adult males of the nominate subspecies E. c. chlorotica have a bright yellow forehead and forecrown; the color extends to the rear of the eye. The rest of their head and their upperparts are glossy blue-black that in good light has a purplish tinge. The upper side of their tail is blackish and the underside duller with white on the inner webs of the outer two or three pairs of feathers. Their flight feathers are black with a dark blue tinge and dark blue edges; the basal half of them have white inner webs. Their chin and throat are glossy blue-black and the rest of their underparts are bright yellow. Adult females have a mostly olive head with a faint grayish tinge, a yellowish forehead, and dusky lores. Their upperparts, wings, and tail are olive with the grayish tinge. Their throat and underparts are mostly olive-yellow with a whitish central breast and a pale ash-gray central belly. The other subspecies of the purple-throated euphonia differ from the nominate and each other thus:

E. c. cynophora: male has slightly more yellow on forecrown than nominate, with glossier violet bib and upperparts and slightly deeper yellow underparts; female has uniform olive-yellow underparts E. c. …

The purple-throated euphonia has a disjunct distribution whose ranges cover most of South America. It is absent from the Amazon Basin except along the Amazon River itself, from the Andes west, and Chile and southern Argentina. The subspecies are found thus:

E. c. cynophora: from east-central Colombia east into west-central Venezuela's Táchira and western Apure states and across its Amazonas and Bolívar states; also into extreme northern Brazil's Roraima state E. c. chlorotica: Guyana, Suriname, and as a vagrant to French Guiana; separately in Brazil to the Atlantic in an area bounded on the west and south roughly by eastern and southern Amapá, the Tapajós River south of the Amazon, northern Mato Grosso, northern Goiás, northern Minas Gerais, southern Bahia, and Espírito Santo E. c. amazonica: along the Amazon from southeastern Colombia and extreme northeastern Peru through Brazil to the Tapajós E. c. taczanowskii: along river systems in northern and eastern Peru and extreme southern Ecuador's Zamora-Chinchipe Province; on the Pampas del Heath of southeastern Peru's Department of Madre de Dios and northern Bolivia E. c. serrirostris: Brazil south of E. c. …

The purple-throated euphonia feeds primarily on the fruits of mistletoe (Loranthaceae) and other small fruits including those of figs (Ficus), and also includes small numbers of insects in its diet. It forages mostly in pairs or family groups, occasionally in larger groups that may include other euphonias, and regularly joins mixed-species feeding flocks. It usually forages high in trees.