1. a. = DARTER 4 a (Plotus anhinga).
1796. Nemnich, Polygl.-Lex., Sun bird, the Surinam darter.
b. Any bird of the passerine family Nectariniidæ, which comprises small birds with brilliant and variegated plumage, found in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Asia and Australia; also applied to similar birds of other families.
1826. Stephens, Shaw’s Gen. Zool., XIV. I. 229. Cinnyris,… Sun-bird.
1859. Tennent, Ceylon, I. II. ii. 168. Beneath our windows the Sun Birds (known as the Humming Birds of Ceylon) hover all day long.
1879. E. P. Wright, Anim. Life, 254. The Sun Birds, or Nectariniadæ, are to the Old World what the Humming Birds are to the New World…. One species is met so far north as the Jordan valley … called the Jericho Sun Bird (Cinnyris osea).
1906. Westm. Gaz., 9 Feb., 8/2. A malachite sun bird.
c. The sun-bittern, Eurypyga helias.
1825. Waterton, Wand. S. Amer., iii. 220. Here,… I saw the Sun-bird, called Tirana by the Spaniards in the Oroonoque.
1871. Kingsley, At Last, v. His name is Sun-bird,… according to … Stedman, ‘because, when it extends its wings,… there appears on the interior part of each wing a most beautiful representation of a sun.’
d. Any bird of the family Heliornithidæ, which comprises swimming birds found in tropical regions of America, Africa and Asia; also called sun-grebes or finfoots.
1872. Coues, N. Amer. Birds, 242. The sun-birds, Heliornithidæ, are a small but remarkable family.
2. (With hyphen.) a. A bird sacred to the sun or connected with sun-worship. b. A mythical ‘bird of the sun,’ or the sun regarded as a bird.
1871. Tylor, Prim. Cult., xvi. II. 262. When at mid-day the sunlight poured down upon the altar,… the sun-birds, the tonatzuli, were let fly up sunward as messengers.
1877. J. E. Carpenter, trans. Tiele’s Hist. Relig., 144. By the infinite world-serpent (ṣesha or ananta) he [sc. Vishṉu] is drawn over the waves of the primeval ocean, or by the sun-bird Garuḍa through the sky.
1904. Budge, 3rd & 4th Egypt. Rooms Brit. Mus., 122. The Sun-god Rā was depicted … in the form of a hawk-headed man, because the hawk was regarded as a sun-bird.
