All species › Jacamars and puffbirds › Jacamars › Purus Jacamar
Purus Jacamar | Galbalcyrhynchus purusianus
Purusglansvogel | Jacamará del Purús | Ariramba-castanha
The Purus Jacamar is a stocky, chestnut jacamar with a heavy pink bill, named after the Purus River in western Brazil. It lives in small groups along rivers and oxbow lakes in south-western Amazonia. Together with the White-eared Jacamar it forms the genus Galbalcyrhynchus, with a shorter tail and a thicker bill than the species of the genus Galbula.
Voice
Groups often give a series of high, shrill whistles together that speeds up into a rising trill, while the birds pump their tails. Also single, short pee calls.
Recording: Jacob Wijpkema — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
18–20 cm, stocky, with a long, heavy, dagger-shaped bill and a fairly short tail. The bill is pink to reddish. The plumage is almost entirely dark chestnut; the crown, wings and tail are darker, nearly blackish. There is no white ear patch. The legs are reddish. The sexes are alike; juveniles are duller, with a paler bill.
Confusion species
White-eared Jacamar Galbalcyrhynchus leucotis has the same shape and bill, but a white ear patch and a dark crown; it lives further north and west, and the two species barely overlap. Great Jacamar Jacamerops aureus is larger, with green upperparts, a black, slightly decurved bill and a longer tail, and keeps to the forest interior. The other jacamars of the region have glossy green upperparts and a thinner, black or yellow bill.
Habitat
Edges of várzea forest, riverside vegetation along rivers and oxbow lakes, and forest edges near water in the lowlands, mostly below 500 m. It perches in groups of two to six on open branches at the forest edge and sallies for large flying insects such as butterflies, dragonflies, wasps and bees. It nests in a tunnel in a bank or in an arboreal 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 Peru in the south-east, in the drainages of the Ucayali, Purus and Madre de Dios. In Bolivia in the north, in Pando and northern Beni. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in western Amazonian Brazil, mainly along the Purus and Juruá.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Travel by boat or walk along the shores of oxbow lakes and rivers in Madre de Dios, for example around Puerto Maldonado and in the Manu area. Groups often perch on bare branches at the water's edge and give themselves away by their chorus.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The range is fairly restricted, but the riverside vegetation the species inhabits is still largely intact.
Scientific name
Galbalcyrhynchus purusianus | Goeldi, 1904
Goeldi described the species in 1904 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Galbalcyrhynchus was introduced in 1845 by Des Murs. The genus name combines Galbula (jacamars), Alcyone (a kingfisher genus) and Greek rhunkhos, 'bill'. The species name purusianus refers to the Purus River in Brazil, not necessarily the type locality. The specimen the first description was based on came from Upper Purus River and Acre, Brazil.