Rufous-tailed jacamar
Galbula ruficauda
— Where the name comes from
Galbula was, to the Romans, a small yellow bird, perhaps the golden oriole, and the name passed to this genus of American birds for their metallic splendour. Ruficauda means “rufous-tailed”. Jacamar comes from a word in the Tupi language of Brazil, brought to Europe by eighteenth-century naturalists.
— Facts
- Group
- Birds · Aves
- Order
- Woodpeckers and toucans
- Habitat
- Forest edges, clearings, secondary woodland near water
- Range
- From southern Mexico to northern Argentina
- Size
- 20–25 cm including the bill, about 25 g
- Diet
- Butterflies, dragonflies and other insects caught in flight
- Lifespan
- Not precisely known
— Characteristics
- 01
It has a metallic green back and a very long, thin bill.
- 02
It waits motionless on a branch and sallies out at a passing insect.
- 03
It nests in tunnels dug into earth banks.
— What sets it apart
It has become a tool of evolutionary biology. It eats butterflies, beats them against a branch to knock off the wings, and is very good at telling tasty ones from toxic or foul-tasting ones: in the 1980s a researcher in Costa Rica offered it hundreds of different butterflies to find out which it refused. That was how mimicry was measured in the field: harmless species that copy the colours of nasty ones really are rejected by a predator that has learnt to recognise that pattern.
