Sunbirds (Nectariniidae)

Scarlet-chested Sunbird (Chalcomitra senegalensis) - HBW 13, p. 264

French: Souimanga à poitrine rouge German: Rotbrust-Glanzköpfchen Spanish: Suimanga Pechiescarlata
Other common names: Scarlet-breasted/Scarlet-throated Sunbird

Taxonomy: Certhia senegalensis Linnaeus, 1766, Senegal.
Genus previously merged with Nectarinia. May form a superspecies with C. hunteri; sometimes regarded as conspecific, but the two are ecologically segregated in area of marginal overlap in E Kenya. Several additional races proposed: adamauae (described from Adamaoua, in NC Cameroon), considered inseparable from acik; saturatior (from Malanje, in Angola) and inaestimata (Dar es Salaam, in E Tanzania), both synonymized with gutturalis; and aequatorialis (Bukoba, in NW Tanzania) and erythrinae (Trans Nzoia District, in Kenya), both me.. View all taxonomy...

Subspecies and Distribution:

senegalensis (Linnaeus, 1766) - S Mauritania and Senegal E to Nigeria.
acik (Hartmann, 1866) - N Cameroon, S Chad, W & SW Sudan, N Central African Republic, NE DRCongo and NE Uganda.
proteus (Rüppell, 1840) - SE Sudan (Boma Hills), Ethiopia, Eritrea and N Kenya.

See all 5 subspecies

senegalensis (Linnaeus, 1766) - S Mauritania and Senegal E to Nigeria.
acik (Hartmann, 1866) - N Cameroon, S Chad, W & SW Sudan, N Central African Republic, NE DRCongo and NE Uganda.
proteus (Rüppell, 1840) - SE Sudan (Boma Hills), Ethiopia, Eritrea and N Kenya.
lamperti (Reichenow, 1897) - S Sudan (E of White Nile: Imatong Mts, Leboni Forest), E DRCongo (L Albert S to N L Tanganyika), W, C & S Uganda and C Kenya S to W Tanzania.
gutturalis (Linnaeus, 1766) - Angola and S DRCongo E to SE Kenya, Pemba I and Zanzibar, S to C Namibia, N Botswana, Mozambique, and E South Africa (Limpopo Province S to KwaZulu-Natal and N Eastern Cape).