Latest update January 19th, 2025 4:45 AM
The Jacamar
The jacamar is of the family, Galbulidae, of near passerine birds from tropical South and Central America, extending up to Mexico. The order contains five genera and 18 species. The family is closely related to the puffbirds, another Neotropical family, and the two families are often separated into their own order away from the Piciformes, instead being placed in the Galbuliformes. They are principally birds of low altitude woodlands and forests, and particularly of forest and edge and canopy.
The jacamars are small to medium sized perching birds ranging between 14-34 centimetres in length and weighing between 17-75 grams. They are glossy elegant birds with long bills and tails. In appearance and behaviour they show resemblances to the Old World bee-eaters, as most ariel insectivores tend to have short wide bills as opposed to long thin ones. The legs are short and weak, and the feet are zygodactyl. Their plumage is often bright and highly iridescent, although it is quite dull in a few species. There are minor differences in plumage based on sex, males often having a white patch on the breast.
Jacamars are insectivores, taking a variety of insect prey (many specialize on butterflies and moths) by hawking in the air.
Birds sit in favoured perches and sally towards the prey when it is close enough. Only the Great Jacamar varies from the rest of the family, taking prey by gleaning and occasionally taking small lizards and spiders.
The breeding systems of jacamars have not been studied in depth. They are thought to generally be monogamous, although a few species are thought to sometimes engage in cooperative breeding with several adults sharing duties. The family nests in holes either in the soil or in arboreal termite mounds. Ground nesting species usually nest in the banks of rivers (or more recently, roads), although if these are not available they will nest in the soil held by the roots of fallen trees.
Bank-nesting jacamars can sometimes be loosely colonial. Clutch sizes are between 1-4 eggs, with 2-4 being more common. Both parents participate in incubation. Little is known about the incubation times of most species, although it lasts for between 19–26 days in the Rufous-tailed Jacamar. Chicks are born with down feathers, unique among the piciformes.
The Paradise Jacamar, Galbula dea, has been discovered in Guyana. This bird species is rather small, approximately 30cm long with a long pointed tail, dark brown cap, white throat and long needle-like bill. It has dark greenish blue plumage with iridescent wings. Both sexes are similar.
According to researchers this species is distributed throughout tropical rainforests and savannahs of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and the Guianas. The bird’s range encompasses nearly the entire Amazon Basin, except in the northwest basin in parts of Colombia and Venezuela, (the northeast is the three countries of the Guianas, which drain to the Atlantic-Caribbean). Their diet consists mainly of butterflies and other flying insects.
Widepsread and common throughout its range, the Paradise Jacamar is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
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