All species › Jacamars and puffbirds › Jacamars › White-chinned Jacamar
White-chinned Jacamar | Galbula tombacea
Witkinglansvogel | Jacamará barbiblanco | Ariramba-de-barba-branca
The White-chinned Jacamar is a dark jacamar of western Amazonia, with a long black bill and a small white chin spot. It lives mainly in várzea forest and along streams and oxbow lakes, where it perches on low branches in the shade. South of the Amazon it is largely replaced by the Bluish-fronted Jacamar.
Voice
A high, sharp pee, and an accelerating series of high notes ending in a trill.
Recording: Mauricio Cuellar Ramirez (@Birding.travel) — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
20–22 cm, with a long, thin, black bill. The upperparts are dark glossy green with a bronze sheen; the crown is duller, greyish brown. A small white chin spot; the rest of the throat is green, like the breast band. The belly is dark rufous. The outer tail feathers are rufous from below. The female has a paler, more cinnamon belly. Juveniles are duller.
Confusion species
Bluish-fronted Jacamar Galbula cyanescens has a blue-green crown and no white chin, and lives mainly south of the Amazon. Coppery-chested Jacamar Galbula pastazae lives higher in the Andean foothills and has a bare orange eye-ring. Yellow-billed Jacamar Galbula albirostris is smaller, with a yellow bill. Purplish Jacamar Galbula chalcothorax is dark purplish.
Habitat
Várzea forest, riverside forest along streams and rivers, the edges of oxbow lakes and swamp forest, less in terra firme forest, in the lowlands up to about 500 m. It perches on a low branch in the shade, often over water, and sallies for butterflies, dragonflies and other flying insects. It nests in a tunnel in a bank or in the root plate of a fallen tree.
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 south-east, in Caquetá, Putumayo and Amazonas. In Ecuador in the eastern lowlands. In Peru in the north-east, mainly north of the Amazon and the Marañón in Loreto. Absent from Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in western Amazonian Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Along streams and lakes in várzea forest in eastern Ecuador, for example at lodges along the Napo. The bird often perches low over the water and returns to the same branch after a sally.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species has a fairly large range and is fairly common in suitable habitat.
Scientific name
Galbula tombacea | Spix, 1824
Spix described the species in 1824 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 tombac, a copper-zinc alloy, for the bronzy gloss of the plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from São Paulo de Olivença, Amazonas, Brazil.