Saw-billed Hermit

Description:

The Saw-billed Hermit (Ramphodon naevius) is a hummingbird from southeastern Brazil, the only member of the genus Ramphodon. It is around 14–16 cm long and is one of the heaviest of the hermits; its straight bill has a hooked tip. It lives in humid forests, where it aggressively defends feeding routes ("trap-lines") from individuals of its own species as well as other hummingbirds. It is currently considered near-threatened, since it has a restricted range in threatened Atlantic forests. The Saw-billed Hermit is placed in the hermit subfamily Phaethornithinae, but among these birds, it is the species most similar to the typical humingbirds, Trochilinae (Hinkelmann, 1999). This, coupled with the considerable number of autapomorphies such as the unusual bill, suggest it is the most primitive species of the hermit lineage; a situation paralleled by the equally unusual Tooth-billed Hummingbird in the Trochilinae.