Paradise Jacamar

About the Paradise Jacamar

The paradise jacamar (Galbula dea) is a species of bird in the family Galbulidae. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. The paradise jacamar was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with the kingfishers in the genus Alcedo and coined the binomial name Alcedo dea. Linnaeus based his entry on the "swallow-tail'd king-fisher" that had been described and illustrated in 1743 by the English naturalist George Edwards in his multivolume A Natural History of Uncommon Bird. Edwards had examined a specimen that had been collected in the Dutch colony of Surinam. The paradise jacamar is now one of ten species placed in the genus Galbula that was introduced in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. The genus name Galbula is from the Latin galuba, a word for a small yellow bird. The specific epithet dea is Latin meaning "goddess".

Four subspecies are recognised: G. d. dea (Linnaeus, 1758) – Venezuela, the Guianas and Brazil (north of the Amazon) G. d. amazonum (Sclater, PL, 1855) – north Bolivia and southwest Brazil G. d. brunneiceps... Wikipedia →