Cinnyris shelleyi
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~60% in a week ~90%
Shelley's sunbird (Cinnyris shelleyi) is a species of bird in the sunbird family Nectariniidae. It is found in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The species is named after George Ernest Shelley, an English ornithologist and nephew of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Shelley's sunbird was formally described in 1899 by the explorer and ornithologist Boyd Alexander under the current binomial name Cinnyris shelleyi based on a specimen collected near the Zambezi River, 60 mi (97 km) downstrean of the junction of the river with the Kafue River. The bird is named after the English ornithologist George Ernest Shelley who had written a book on the sunbirds.
Two subspecies are recognised: The subspecies C. s. hofmanni has sometimes been considered as a separate species, Hofmann's sunbird. Wikipedia →
Song0:05
Zambia · 2020
© Dries Van de Loock · XC566522 · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mikumi National Park | 🇹🇿 Tanzania |
More parks will be added in future updates.
Possible
About 30% of wildlife watchers report a Shelley's Sunbird sighting in Mikumi National Park on a given day, based on 73 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 33rd most-seen of the 261 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 60%, and over a week to about 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
July
In that month about 60% of wildlife watchers report a Shelley's Sunbird in Mikumi National Park on a given day, against about 10% in May and June, the lowest months. That is one of Mikumi National Park's driest months, with about 25 mm of rain against 200 mm in April.
Between 11 am and 2 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Shelley's Sunbird sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Mikumi National Park, in our data
Mikumi National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Shelley's Sunbird sightings: about 30% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Shelley's Sunbird is recorded against all the birds logged in Mikumi National Park (73 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
