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Bronzy Jacamar | Galbula leucogastra
Bronsglansvogel | Jacamará bronceado | Ariramba-bronzeada
The Bronzy Jacamar is a small, dark jacamar with a bronze-green gloss and a white belly. It is closely tied to forest and scrub on poor white-sand soils in northern and eastern Amazonia. In the guide area it lives mainly in eastern Colombia; elsewhere it is rare and local.
Voice
A series of high, thin whistles, pee-pee-pee, sometimes accelerating into a short trill; also single thin calls.
Recording: Jacob Wijpkema — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
19–21 cm, with a long, straight, black bill. The upperparts and breast are dark with a bronze-green to coppery gloss; the crown is dull bluish. The male has a white throat patch, the female a buff one. The belly and flanks are largely white. The tail is dark and rather short.
Confusion species
Purplish Jacamar Galbula chalcothorax is slightly larger, more purple than bronze-green, with a darker belly, and lives further west. Paradise Jacamar Galbula dea is larger, with a much longer, pointed tail and a pale crown. The green jacamars with a rufous belly, such as White-chinned Jacamar Galbula tombacea, are not white below.
Habitat
Low, open forest and scrub on white sand, edges of terra firme forest, clearings and wooded savanna, from the lowlands up to about 500 m. It perches at middle to high levels on open branches and catches flying insects. It nests in a self-dug tunnel in an earth bank or in a termite nest.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia in the east, mainly in Guainía, Vaupés and Amazonas, in white-sand forest. In Bolivia locally in the north-east. Only a few records are known from Peru and Ecuador; whether the species occurs there regularly is uncertain. Absent from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in southern Venezuela, the Guianas and Brazilian Amazonia.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In white-sand forest in eastern Colombia, for example around Mitú and Inírida, where the bird often perches on a bare branch at the edge of a clearing.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species has a large range, although it is locally tied to a particular forest type on white sand.
Scientific name
Galbula leucogastra | Vieillot, 1817
Vieillot described the species in 1817 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Galbula was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. The genus name comes from Latin galbula, the name for a small yellow bird. The species name comes from Greek leukos, 'white', and gastēr, 'belly': 'white-bellied'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.