Western Swallow-tail Hummingbird ( Eupetomena macroura hirundo )

Zoological series, Volume 13, Part 2, Issue 1 “I'm not the biggest expert on South American hummingbirds, but everywhere I've looked Gould's Western Swallow-tail is now considered a subspecies of Swallow-tailed Hummingbird, so it is now Eupetomena macroura hirundo.” Rob Fergus Bird-B-Gone Ornithologist
Taxonomic Hierarchy
Kingdom	Animalia – Animal, animals
Phylum	Chordata – chordates
Subphylum	Vertebrata – vertebrates
Class	Aves – Birds
Order	Apodiformes – Swifts, Hummingbirds
Family	Trochilidae – Hummingbirds
Subfamily	Trochilinae
Genus	Eupetomena Gould, 1853
Species	Eupetomena macroura (Gmelin, 1788) – Swallow-tailed Hummingbird
Subspecies	Eupetomena macroura hirundo Gould, 1875
Eupetomena macroura hirundo, Gould, 1875, Taxonomic Serial No.: 693499

 

Taxonomic Hierarchy
Kingdom	Animalia – Animal, animals
Phylum	Chordata – chordates
Subphylum	Vertebrata –vertebrates
Class	Aves – Birds
Order	Apodiformes – Swifts, Hummingbirds
Family	Trochilidae – Hummingbirds
Subfamily	Trochilinae
Genus	Eupetomena Gould, 1853
Species	Eupetomena macroura (Gmelin, 1788) – Swallow-tailed Hummingbird
Direct Children:
Subspecies	Eupetomena macroura boliviana Zimmer, 1950
Subspecies	Eupetomena macroura cyanoviridis Grantsau, 1988
Subspecies	Eupetomena macroura hirundo Gould, 1875
Subspecies	Eupetomena macroura macroura (Gmelin, 1788)
Subspecies	Eupetomena macroura simoni Hellmayr, 1929

From Monograph of the Trochilidae, Gould

EUPETOMENA HIRUNDO, Gould. Western Swallow-tail. Eupetomena hirundo, Gould, Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. (4) xvi. p. 370 (1875).— Sclater & Salv. Proc. Zool. Soc. 1876, p. 18. — Elliot, Synopsis of the Humming-Birds, p. 22 (1878). — Eudes-Deslongchamps, Annuaire Mus. d'Hist. Nat. Caen, i. p. 143 (1881). I WAS indebted to Mr. Henry Whitely for the opportunity of describing, through the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History,’ this fine species of Humming-bird, which is very similar to the Eupetomena macroura, and is the western representative of that bird on the great continent of South America. The present bird differs from E. macroura by having a shorter tail, the feathers of which are broader and less rigid; the wing, on the other hand, is larger and longer. In colour, while E. macroura is always blue on the head and breast, the new species is distinguished by these parts being washed with green. Mr. Whitely found numbers of this bird flying over the open plains in pursuit of insects. He says that they "rarely approach a flower, but appear to take their food hawking about in the air in the manner of Swallows— in fact, at first sight might be easily mistaken for those birds." He procured the species at Huiro, in the Valley of Santa Ana, Peru, at an elevation of 4800 feet. Head and throat deep blue, with a wash of green on the crown; body both above and beneath green; wings, tail, and under-coverts steel-bluish black; bill jet-black. The female is similarly coloured to the male; but the outer shaft of the wing is not enlarged as in the male, where the stem of this feather is dilated as in the genus Campylopterus. Total length 6 1/2 inches, bill 3/4, wing 3 1/8, tail 3 1/2. In the Plate I have given representations of a male in two different positions, drawn from the type specimen in my cabinet.

References and Further Reading

Eupetomena macroura,(Gmelin, 1788), Taxonomic Serial No.: 555069

Monograph of the Trochilidae, J. Gould

Publication: Zoological series, Volume 13, Part 2, Issue 1

Verification

"...hummingbird systematics/nomenclature is a very difficult, problematic, and it seems continually changing area, where there remains not complete agreement on what is best.
Regarding your name: Eupetomena macroura hirundo
My website -- which largely forms the basis for much of the ITIS data -- though differences do and will always exist) shows that Gould first proposed this name in 1875
1875 Ann.Mag.Nat.Hist.(4) 16 p. 370 Eupetomena macroura hirundo, Gould
-Alan P. Peterson, M.D.