Gray-breasted Sabrewing / Grijsborstsabelvleugel

Gray-breasted Sabrewing (Campylopterus largipennis)

Pictures (click on them to enlarge)
© Dennis Binda	© Carl Beel	© Ton Nagtegaal
© Klaas de Jong

Grey-breasted Sabrewing: This large hummingbird perches often at forest borders and will chase other hummingbirds. It is one of the more common hummingbirds in the forest. Seen from below the top of its tail is black with a lot of white below that, what helps to distinguish it from the female fork-tailed woodnymph, with less white.
Picture of a Grey-breasted Sabrewing, made by Dennis Binda in Suriname in 2008. And one by Carl Beel on the Brownsberg in October 2013.
Dominiek Plouvier made the video, a sabrewing in a lemon tree.

Video (click the link or the 'play'-button to see)
Video recording of a Gray-breasted Sabrewing © ;

Distribution

Each small square indicates the observation of at least one (group) of these birds, the medium ones at least four observations on different days and the largest ones ten or more. The color of each square indicates: blue for coastal area, yellow for savanna and red for rainforest.
Not all places in Suriname have been equally often visited by birders, so the distribution of the squares gives an indication of the whereabouts of the birds, but also of the birders. Some places deep in the south have no reported bird observations, by experienced birders, within 60 kilometer.

Abundance in different areas
coastal zone (blue dots on the map) :
northern savannas (yellow dots (in the north)) :
rainforest under 400 m (red dots) :
rainforest above 400 m (red dots) :
Sipaliwini savanna (yellow dots (in the south)) :
A blank is shown if not convincingly reported in the zone. Data interpreted by Arie Spaans, Otte Ottema and Jan Hein Ribot.

Names
Scientific name:	Campylopterus largipennis
Order:	Apodiformes
Family:	Trochilidae, 35 in Suriname
Dutch:	Grijsborstsabelvleugel
English:	Gray-breasted Sabrewing
Sranan ('Surinamese'):
Guyana:
Papiamento:
Spanish (Venezuela):	Ala de sabre gris
Portugese (Brazil):	Asa-de-sabre
Arowak:
Carib:
French:	Campyloptere à larges tuyaux

Observations through the year	Observations of breeding through the year

The 283 reported observations of this bird in Suriname, mainly for the last 50 years up to 2018, have been grouped by month. More birds on one day are counted as one observation. Of course, if the graph should depict the total number of birds seen, the differences between the months could be much more pronounced.	The reported breeding observations of this bird in Suriname. Most observations are about nest with eggs, some about fledglings, or feeding at a nest or the building of a nest. Of the about 5000 nests and eggs found for all species together, about 1/3 comes from the egg collection of Penard between 1896 and 1905. For some reason most collecting then was done in the first half of each year, so the shown distribution does not necessarily reflect the actual breeding preferences. The main dry season in Suriname is reckoned to be from half August to the end of November, the main wet season from half April to half August, but the the timing of begin and end does vary from year to year. Around March a second dry season often occurs.

Observations through the year

Observations of breeding through the year

The 283 reported observations of this bird in Suriname, mainly for the last 50 years up to 2018, have been grouped by month. More birds on one day are counted as one observation. Of course, if the graph should depict the total number of birds seen, the differences between the months could be much more pronounced.

The reported breeding observations of this bird in Suriname. Most observations are about nest with eggs, some about fledglings, or feeding at a nest or the building of a nest.

Of the about 5000 nests and eggs found for all species together, about 1/3 comes from the egg collection of Penard between 1896 and 1905. For some reason most collecting then was done in the first half of each year, so the shown distribution does not necessarily reflect the actual breeding preferences.
The main dry season in Suriname is reckoned to be from half August to the end of November, the main wet season from half April to half August, but the the timing of begin and end does vary from year to year. Around March a second dry season often occurs.

Last update: September 2024 by Jan Hein Ribot. Please mail your comments, photos to: jhribot ( residing at ) gmail (point!) com.
observations can be uploaded to suriname.observation.org or ebird.org ).