White-browed Purpletuft

The white-browed purpletuft is 11 to 12 cm (4.3 to 4.7 in) long and weighs about 20 g (0.71 oz). The sexes have almost the same plumage. They have long wings, a short tail, and a wide bill with a hooked tip. Adults have white lores, a white stripe behind the eye, a white "moustache", and a white throat. The rest of their head and their back, wings, and tail are blackish brown. They have a white band on the rump. Their underparts are mostly white with dusky brown sides and dusky bars on the flanks. Males have a small tuft of violet feathers on their upper flank; females' tufts are white. Both sexes have a dark brown iris, a black maxilla, a lead-gray mandible, and dark lead-gray legs. Juveniles have white tips on their dark feathers.

The white-browed purpletuft is a bird of the Amazon Basin. It is found from the southeastern third of Colombia south through eastern Ecuador and eastern Peru and from there east into southern Venezuela's Amazonas state, across Amazonian Brazil to the Atlantic in Pará and northern Maranhão and south to northern Goiás, and into far northern Bolivia. It inhabits the canopy and edges of humid evergreen forest and secondary woodland. In elevation it reaches 500 m (1,600 ft) in Colombia and Ecuador, 850 m (2,800 ft) in Peru, and 200 m (700 ft) and "probably higher" in Venezuela.

The white-browed purpletuft feeds primarily on insects and also includes much fruit in its diet. Berries of mistletoe (Loranthaceae) are apparently favored. It usually forages in pairs and sometimes in small groups. It takes insects in mid-air with a sally from a treetop and fruit while perched or during a brief hover after a sally.