Four, all classed as Least Concern The typical honeycreepers form a genus Cyanerpes of small birds in the tanager family Thraupidae.

They occur in the forest canopy, and, as the name implies, they are specialist nectar feeders with long curved bills.

The genus Cyanerpes was introduced in 1899 by the American ornithologist Harry C. Oberholser with the red-legged honeycreeper as the type species.

[4] These two species are sister taxa and belong to the subfamily Hemithraupinae rather than to Dacninae with the members of Cyanerpes.

A commonly repeated, yet false, belief about the various honeycreeper species is that some of them lay black eggs.