The pale-headed jacamar (''Brachygalba goeringi'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

in the family

Galbulidae The jacamars are a family, Galbulidae, of near passerine birds from tropical South and Central America, extending up to Mexico. The family contains five genera and 18 species. The family is closely related to the puffbirds, another Neotropical ...

. It is found in

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

and

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

Taxonomy and systematics

The pale-headed jacamar is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

. It and the dusky-backed (''B. salmoni''),

brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model used ...

(''B. lugubris''), and white-throated jacamars (''B. albogularis'') form a superspecies.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 19 January 2021. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithological Society. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCBaseline.htm retrieved January 19, 2021

Description

The pale-headed jacamar is long and weighs . The male's crown, nape, and shoulders are ashy brown. The rest of the upper parts are dark brown glossed with greenish; they look blue-black when worn. It has a pale

supercilium The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also ...

and a buffy-white throat. It has a chestnut band on the upper belly and dark brown flanks; the rest of the underparts are white. The female is almost identical. The juvenile has a gray crown and nape, and the upper parts are brighter and the green gloss stronger.Tobias, J., T. Züchner, and T.A. de Melo Júnior (2020). Pale-headed Jacamar (''Brachygalba goeringi''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.pahjac1.01 retrieved May 8, 2021

Distribution and habitat

The pale-headed jacamar is found from Arauca and

Casanare Department Casanare Department (, es, Departamento de Casanare) is a department in the central eastern region of Colombia. Its capital is Yopal, which is also the episcopal seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Yopal. It contains oil fields and an 800 ...

s in Colombia north through northwestern Venezuela at least to Lara. It primarily inhabits the edges of gallery and

secondary forest A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. ...

in ''

llanos The Llanos (Spanish ''Los Llanos'', "The Plains"; ) is a vast tropical grassland plain situated to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in northwestern South America. It is an ecoregion of the tropical and subtropical grasslands, sav ...

'' grasslands. In elevation it ranges as high as but is usually found much lower.

Behavior

Feeding

The pale-headed jacamar's diet is insects, mostly

Lepidoptera Lepidoptera ( ) is an order (biology), order of insects that includes butterfly, butterflies and moths (both are called lepidopterans). About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera are described, in 126 Family (biology), families and 46 Taxonomic r ...

and Odonata. It often perches on emergent branches in pairs or small family groups and sallies from there to catch its flying prey.

Breeding

The pale-headed jacamar nests in burrows in earth banks. Nesting has been noted in Venezuela during April and May.

Vocalization

The pale-headed jacamar's song is a series of high "weet" notes that increase in speed and pitch and ends with a tril

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

has assessed the pale-headed jacamar as being of Least Concern. It is " mmon throughout its range..." and " specific threats redocumented so far, despite overall habitat loss in certain areas as a result of deforestation.

References

External links

Pale-headed jacamar videos
on the Internet Bird Collection

VIREO ttp://vireo.acnatsci.org/species_image.php?species=Brachygalba+goeringi Photo-Medium Res* ttp://home.scarlet.be/~tse98017/phjacam.jpg Photobr>Article
home.scarlet.be
Picture
classicnatureprints {{Taxonbar, from=Q1273654 Brachygalba Birds of Venezuela Birds of Colombia Birds described in 1869 Taxa named by Philip Sclater Taxa named by Osbert Salvin Taxonomy articles created by Polbot