Greater double-collared sunbird

The greater double-collared sunbird (Cinnyris afer, Linnaeus 1766) is a 14 cm passerine in the family Nectariniidae, resident in southern, eastern and northeastern South Africa, Eswatini, and eastern Lesotho. The adult male is unmistakable: iridescent metallic green on the head, throat and back with a broad scarlet breast band separated from the green by a narrow metallic blue border. It feeds primarily on nectar, probing tubular and cup-shaped flowers across fynbos, forest edges, montane shrublands and gardens; it supplements its diet with fruit and, especially when raising young, insects and spiders. As a regular visitor to bird-pollinated genera including Aloe, Erythrina, Tecoma and Leonotis, it functions as an incidental pollen vector across its range and is a highly garden-attractable species wherever nectar-rich Southern African natives are grown.

Nectar plants · 8

Restricted to South Africa, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), and eastern Lesotho. Subspecies C. a. afer occupies the southern Western Cape and southwestern Eastern Cape; subspecies C. a. saliens occurs in a broad band from Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces through KwaZulu-Natal, western Eswatini, and eastern Lesotho, south along the coast to the Eastern Cape. Mainly resident; partially migratory in the northeast of the range. Absent from the arid Karoo interior and from countries north of Eswatini.