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Rufous-tailed Jacamar
The Rufous-tailed Jacamar (Galbula ruficauda) is a near-passerine bird which breeds in the tropical New World in southern Mexico, Central America and South America as far as southern Brazil and Ecuador.
The jacamars are elegant brightly coloured birds with long bills and tails, which feed on insects caught in the air, like bee-eaters. They distinguish between edible and unpalatable butterflies mainly according to body shape (Chai 1996). This species is a resident breeder in a range of dry or moist woodlands and scrub. The two to four rufous-spotted white eggs are laid in a burrow in a bank or termite mound.
The Rufous-tailed Jacamar is typically 25 cm long with a 5 cm long black bill. The subspecies G. r. brevirostris has, as its name implies, a shorter bill. This bird is metallic green above, and the underparts are mainly orange, including the undertail, but there is a green breast band. Sexes differ in that the male has a white throat, and the female a buff throat; she also tends to have paler underparts. The race G. r. pallens has a copper-coloured back in both sexes.
This insectivore hunts from a perch, sitting with its bill tilted up, then flying out to catch flying insects.
The Rufous-tailed Jacamar's call is a sharp pee-op, and the song a high thin peeo-pee-peeo-pee-pe-pe, ending in a trill.
References
Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
Chai, Peng (1996): Butterfly visual characteristics and ontogeny of responses to butterflies by a specialized tropical bird. Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 59(1): 3767.
External links
Rufous-tailed Jacamar videos on the Internet Bird Collection
Rufous-tailed Jacamar photo gallery VIREO
Stamps (for British Honduras-(Belize), Guyana, and Nicaragua)
Photo-High Res; Article www.tsgcs.co.uk
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Rufous-tailed Jacamar
