Rufous-tailed Jacamar

Galbula ruficauda

eBird gives this description for the Rufous-tailed Jacamar:  Handsome, slender, green-and-rusty bird of humid tropical lowlands. Lives in evergreen forest, often at edges and around adjacent clearings. Perches upright at mid-heights on vines or other exposed perches and sallies out for flying insects, especially butterflies, dragonflies, and wasps. Note the very long, slender black bill (like a giant hummingbird). Throat is white on male and buffy on female. Loud shrieking calls may draw attention.

The Birds of the World website provides this information about this bird:  The Rufous-tailed Jacamar (Galbula ruficauda Cuvier 1816) is a beautiful inhabitant of forest edges and clearings of Central and South America. It occurs in several disjunct populations: from eastern Mexico south to western Panama; from eastern Panama south to western Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela; in Guyana; and from Bolivia east to eastern Brazil. The six recognized subspecies of Rufous-tailed Jacamar vary slightly in the amounts of black on the chin and in the number of green central rectrices, but in general males are an iridescent coppery/golden green above with a white throat and cinnamon-rufous underparts. Females are a slightly duller green and have a cinnamon-buff throat. Rufous-tailed Jacamars feed almost exclusively on flying insects, especially dragonflies, butterflies and moths.  These birds forage from a perch on an exposed branch 1 to 3 meters from the ground, and sally out to catch insects on the wing.  After the jacamar has caught an insect it beats it several times against a branch to stun it and remove the insect’s wings before it swallows.

I met my first Rufous-tailed Jacamar during my birding trip to Costa Rica with Tropical Birding Tours.  After breakfast on the morning of Monday, February 6, 2023, we were guided at La Selva by one of the local guides (named Octavio) and one of the first birds we saw very near the main Dining Hall area was this Jacamar.  I was delighted to meet and watch this beautiful and colorful little bird!  Later on during my trip, at Carara National Park on the late morning of June 11, 2023, I also watched and got a better picture of the Jacamar, seen below.  

I saw the Rufous-tailed Jacamar for the second time on August 19, 2023, while taking a boat ride on the Juruena River in the Amazon Basin Region of Brazil.  Our group with Jeff Parker Tours was exploring a side channel of the river when we saw this bird perched on a tree– it provided us with some excellent looks.  Look here for my blog post that includes the sighting of this bird.  Here are some of the pictures I took that day  in Brazil.