All species › Jacamars and puffbirds › Jacamars › Pale-headed Jacamar
Pale-headed Jacamar | Brachygalba goeringi
Grijskopglansvogel | Jacamará cabeciblanco | Ariramba-de-cabeça-pálida
The Pale-headed Jacamar is a small jacamar with a pale, greyish-brown head, found in gallery forest and forest edges in the llanos of Colombia and Venezuela. It lives in pairs or family groups that hunt flying insects from projecting branches. In the guide area it occurs only in north-eastern Colombia.
Voice
A series of high weet notes that speed up and rise in pitch, ending in a trill.
Recording: Iván Lau — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
17–18 cm, with a long, straight black bill and a fairly short tail. The crown, nape and shoulders are ashy grey to greyish brown, and there is a pale supercilium. The rest of the upperparts are dark brown with a green gloss, blue-black in worn birds. The throat is buffy white, a chestnut band crosses the upper belly, the flanks are dark brown and the rest of the underparts are white. The sexes are nearly alike; juveniles have a greyer head and a stronger green gloss.
Confusion species
Brown Jacamar Brachygalba lugubris has a darker, brown head without a pale supercilium and lacks the chestnut belly band. Rufous-tailed Jacamar Galbula ruficauda is larger and glossy green, with a rufous belly and a longer tail.
Habitat
Mainly the edges of gallery forest and secondary forest in the llanos grasslands, also open country with scattered trees, mostly low, locally up to about 1100 m. It perches on projecting branches, often in pairs or small groups, and sallies for flying insects, mainly butterflies and dragonflies. It nests in a tunnel in an earth bank.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia only in the llanos of Arauca and Casanare. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in the llanos of north-western Venezuela.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the llanos of Casanare, for example on large cattle ranches with gallery forest, search the edges of woodlots and riverine forest for birds on bare, projecting branches.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species has a limited range, but occurs at many sites within it and tolerates a landscape of cattle ranching and scattered woodland.
Scientific name
Brachygalba goeringi | Sclater & Salvin, 1869
Sclater & Salvin described the species in 1869 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Brachygalba was introduced in 1854 by Bonaparte. The genus name combines Greek brakhus, 'short', with Galbula, the jacamar genus. The species name goeringi honours Christian Anton Goering (1836–1905), German naturalist and artist, who worked in Venezuela from 1866 to 1872. The specimen the first description was based on came from Maruria, north of Lake Valencia, Venezuela.