Shining Honeycreeper

Cyanerpes lucidus

eBird describes the Shining Honeycreeper this way:  Small, warblerlike tanager of foothills and adjacent lowlands. Found in humid evergreen forest and edge. Feeds at all levels, mostly in the canopy of fruiting and flowering trees and bushes. All plumages have more strongly decurved bill and shorter tail than the more common Red-legged Honeycreeper. Also note distinctive yellow legs. Male is deep blue overall with black throat and wings. Female has a necklace of bluish streaks across chest.

The Birds of the World website introduces the Shining Honeycreeper this way:  Shining Honeycreepers are small tropical tanagers. They occur from southeastern Mexico south to extreme northwestern Colombia. This species is sexually dimorphic. Shining Honeycreepers are usually seen in small groups, often mixed with tanagers of a different genus. There are two subspecies of Shining Honeycreeper, but these do not differ greatly.  The Shining Honeycreeper is very similar to the Purple Honeycreeper (Cyanerpes caeruleus). Formerly the two species were considered to be conspecific, but the distributions of the two overlap in eastern Panama and in northwestern Colombia.  The Shining Honeycreeper usually is considered to be common, and its conservation status is rated as “Least Concern.”

I saw, and photographed, my first Shining Honeycreeper on the afternoon of February 6, 2023 at La Selva in Costa Rica.  The bird was not very cooperative, hiding in thick foliage, but I was able to get a photo that was good enough for identification purposes.