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Updated: May 9, 2025
The kingfishers grouped in the two cases before which the visitor now stands, include specimens of the Australian brown kingfisher; the green and great jacamars of South America; the European bee eater; the Javan night bird; and the Ternate kingfisher from the Philippine Islands.
Therefore Herbert and Gideon Spilett, with Top in front, traversed more often than their companions the road to the corral, and with the capital guns which they carried, capybaras, agouties, kangaroos, and wild pigs for large game, ducks, grouse, jacamars, and snipe for small game, were never wanting in the house.
Most jacamars are clothed with a plumage of the most beautiful golden, bronze, and steel colours. They bear a strong outward resemblance to kingfishers, but are not further united to that group of birds.
Deodars, douglas-firs, casuarinas, banksias, gum-trees, dragon-trees, and other well-known species, succeeded each other far as the eye could reach. The feathered tribes of the island were all represented tetras, jacamars, pheasants, lories, as well as the chattering cockatoos, parrots, and paroquets.
Therefore Herbert and Gideon Spilett, with Top in front, traversed more often than their companions the road to the corral, and with the capital guns which they carried, capybaras, agouties, kangaroos, and wild pigs for large game, ducks, tetras, grouse, jacamars, and snipe for small, were never wanting in the house.
In this respect, however, the trogons are not equal to the jacamars, whose stupidity in remaining at their posts, seated on low branches in the gloomiest shades of the forest, is somewhat remarkable in a country where all other birds are exceedingly wary. The trogons are found in the tropics of both hemispheres.
The jacamars, which are clothed in plumage of the most beautiful golden-bronze and steel colours, are peculiar to tropical America. At night I slept ashore as a change from the confinement of the canoe, having obtained permission from Senor Joaquim to sling my hammock under his roof.
But, beside these, insects for swallows, swifts, martins, shrikes, thrushes, orioles, sparrows, the beautiful trogans and jacamars, moles, shrews, hedgehogs, and a multitude of others, too numerous to mention, but not too numerous to eat. Ants, also, for the ant-eaters of America, the aard-vark of Africa, and the pangolin of Asia.
Bates found one seated alone on a branch, at no great elevation, uttering at intervals, in a complaining tone, its usual cry of "quaqua." It appeared to be a dull, inactive bird, and even when approached seemed very unwilling to take flight. Among the characteristic members of the feathered tribe in these forests are the jacamars, as they are found in no other part of the world.
The males of all the different species which I have examined have white feathers on the throat. I suspect that all the male jacamars hitherto discovered have this distinctive mark. I could learn nothing of its incubation. The Indians informed me that one species of jacamar lays its eggs in the wood-ants' nests, which are so frequent in the trees of Guiana, and appear like huge black balls.
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