Scientific name: Cinnyris afer
The sunbird is 14 cm long. The adult male has a glossy, metallic green head, throat upper breast and back. It has a broad brilliant red band across the chest, separated from the green breast by a narrow metallic blue band. The rest of the underparts are pale grey. When displaying, yellow feather tufts can be seen on the shoulders. As with other sunbirds the bill is long and decurved. The bill, legs and feet are black. The eye is dark brown. The male can be distinguished from the similar lesser double-collared sunbird by the latter’s smaller size, narrower red chest band and shorter bill.
Endemic to South Africa and Swaziland, occurring in a band from the Limpopo Province through Mpumalanga and Swaziland to KwaZulu-Natal, down the coast to the Western and Eastern Cape. It generally prefers edges of Afromontane, coastal and dune forest, dry valley bushveld, montane tall shrublands, woodland along water courses in arid regions, Acacia savanna, parks and gardens.
It eats nectar supplemented with arthropods and fruit, probing flowers with its bill to obtain nectar, sometimes sucking juice out of fruit. It also hawks insects aerially and gleans prey from leaves and twigs, often joining mixed species aggregations at large sources of nectar.
