Red-rumped Swallow
Encyclopedia
The Red-rumped Swallow (Cecropis daurica) is a small passerine
bird
in the swallow
family. It breeds in open hilly country of temperate southern Europe
and Asia from Portugal
and Spain
to Japan
, India
and tropical Africa
. The Indian and African birds are resident, but European and other Asian birds are migratory
. They winter in Africa or India
and are vagrants to Christmas Island
and northern Australia
.
Red-rumped Swallows are somewhat similar in habits and appearance to the other aerial insectivore
s, such as the related swallows and the unrelated swift
s (order Apodiformes). They have blue upperparts and dusky underparts.
They resemble Barn Swallow
s, but are darker below and have pale or reddish rumps, face and neck collar. They lack a breast band, but have black undertails. They are fast fliers and they swoop on insect
s while airborne. They have broad but pointed wings.
Red-rumped Swallows build quarter-sphere nests with a tunnel entrance lined with mud collected in their beaks, and lay 3 to 6 eggs. They normally nest under cliff overhangs in their mountain homes, but will readily adapt to buildings such as mosques and bridges.
They do not normally form large breeding colonies, but are gregarious outside the breeding season. Many hundreds can be seen at a time on the plains of India.
s have long been recognised as very distinctive, and are placed in a separate subfamily, Pseudochelidoninae, leaving all other swallows and martins in the Hirundininae. DNA
studies suggest that there are three major groupings within the Hirundininae subfamily, broadly correlating with the type of nest built. The groups are the "core martins" including burrowing species like the Sand Martin
, the "nest-adopters", with birds like the Tree Swallow
which utilise natural cavities, and the "mud nest builders". The Cecropsis species construct a closed mud nest and therefore belong to the latter group. It is believed that the evolutionary sequence is from species that make open cup nests (Hirundo
and Ptyonoprogne
), through Delichon
house martins with closed nests, to Cecropis and Petrochelidon
, which have retort-like
closed nests with an entrance tunnel.
The Red-rumped Swallow was formally described by Finnish-Swedish clergyman, explorer and natural scientist Erik Laxmann in 1769 as Hirundo daurica, using a specimen from Mount Schlangen near Zmeinogorsk
Russia. It is now usually placed in the genus Cecropis created by German scientist Friedrich Boie
in 1826, although it is arguable how distinct this genus is from Hirundo, and some authorities retain it in that genus. The genus name Cecropis is taken from that of an Athenian tribe, who were themselves named for the half-dragon mythical Attic king Cecrops I
. The specific daurica is derived from Dauria
, a mountainous region to the east of Lake Baikal
in Russia. the alternative genus Hirundo is the Latin
word for "swallow".
This species is believed to form a superspecies complex with Hirundo striolata. The widely distributed population shows a lot of variation and several have been named as subspecies. Many of these are migratory and overlap in their wintering ranges and field identification of these forms is not reliable. The Sri Lankan breeding population hyperythra is a resident. The underparts are deep chestnut and the nuchal collar is not well marked. The populations in mainland India,, erythropygia has the rump patch uniform dark chestnut without an dark shaft-streaks. The tail fork is shallow and the white patch on the inner web of the outer-tail feathers is indistinct. Populations of japonica breed in eastern Asia and winter in Thailand, Burma, India and northern Australia. They are heavily streaked on the underside and have faint streaks on the rump. The populations along the Himalayas nipalensis migrate to peninsular India in winter and breed from Kulu in the west to Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh in the east. This population has the rump paler with dark shaft streaks. Subspecies rufula of Southern Europe, the Iberian Peninsula east to Baluchistan and Kashmir is resident and winters further south. The chestnut of rump fades to white towards the tail base. The nominate population breeds in Mongolia and Trans-Baikailia wintering in South and Southeast Asia. Subspecies gephyra of inner Mongolia is considered indistinguishable from the nominate subspecies. The African populations include domicella of Senegal, Gambia to Ethiopia; kumboensis from the highlands of Sierra Leone and Cameroon; melanocrissus of the Ethiopian highlands and emini of Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Zambia. Many of the variations are separable only on tail and wing lengths and these vary with overlap across populations.
and Japan, These populations, along with Moroccan birds, are migratory, wintering in sub-Saharan
Africa or south Asia. There are resident races in Africa in a broad belt from West Africa east to Ethiopia and then south to Tanzania, and most Indian and Sri Lanka breeders are also year-round residents. The African and Asian subspecies may undertake local seasonal movements. This species is a regular vagrant outside its breeding range.
_collecting_mud_for_nest_w_img_7964.jpg)
It is thought that the sequence "open-nest" to "closed nest" to "retort nest" represents the evolutionary development in the mud-building swallows, and individual species follow this order of construction. A retort builder like Red-rumped Swallow starts with an open cup, closes it, and then builds the entrance tunnel. It has been proposed that the development of closed nests reduced competition between males for copulations with the females. Since mating occurs inside the nest, the difficulty of access means other males are excluded. This reduction in competition permits the dense breeding colonies typical of the Delichon
and Petrochelidon
genera, but colonial breeding is not inevitable; most Cecropis species are solitary nesters.
The Red-rumped Swallow is extending its range northward in Europe, colonising France and Romania in recent decades. The European population is estimated as 100,000 to 430,000 breeding pairs or 300,000 to 1,290,000 individuals.
Passerine
A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders: with over 5,000 identified species, it has roughly...
bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
in the swallow
Swallow
The swallows and martins are a group of passerine birds in the family Hirundinidae which are characterised by their adaptation to aerial feeding...
family. It breeds in open hilly country of temperate southern Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and Asia from Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
and Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
to Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and tropical Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
. The Indian and African birds are resident, but European and other Asian birds are migratory
Bird migration
Bird migration is the regular seasonal journey undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather. Sometimes, journeys are not termed "true migration" because they are irregular or in only one direction...
. They winter in Africa or India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and are vagrants to Christmas Island
Christmas Island
The Territory of Christmas Island is a territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean. It is located northwest of the Western Australian city of Perth, south of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and ENE of the Cocos Islands....
and northern Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
.
Red-rumped Swallows are somewhat similar in habits and appearance to the other aerial insectivore
Insectivore
An insectivore is a type of carnivore with a diet that consists chiefly of insects and similar small creatures. An alternate term is entomophage, which also refers to the human practice of eating insects....
s, such as the related swallows and the unrelated swift
Swift
The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows, but are actually not closely related to passerine species at all; swifts are in the separate order Apodiformes, which they share with hummingbirds...
s (order Apodiformes). They have blue upperparts and dusky underparts.
They resemble Barn Swallow
Barn Swallow
The Barn Swallow is the most widespread species of swallow in the world. It is a distinctive passerine bird with blue upperparts, a long, deeply forked tail and curved, pointed wings. It is found in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas...
s, but are darker below and have pale or reddish rumps, face and neck collar. They lack a breast band, but have black undertails. They are fast fliers and they swoop on insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...
s while airborne. They have broad but pointed wings.
Red-rumped Swallows build quarter-sphere nests with a tunnel entrance lined with mud collected in their beaks, and lay 3 to 6 eggs. They normally nest under cliff overhangs in their mountain homes, but will readily adapt to buildings such as mosques and bridges.
They do not normally form large breeding colonies, but are gregarious outside the breeding season. Many hundreds can be seen at a time on the plains of India.
Taxonomy
The swallow family consists of 74 bird species which typically hunt insects in flight. The two river martinRiver martin
The river martins form a distinctive subfamily Pseudochelidoninae within the swallow and martin bird family Hirundinidae. The two species are the African River Martin Pseudochelidon eurystomina, found in the Congo and Gabon, and the White-eyed River Martin Pseudochelidon sirintarae, known only from...
s have long been recognised as very distinctive, and are placed in a separate subfamily, Pseudochelidoninae, leaving all other swallows and martins in the Hirundininae. DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
studies suggest that there are three major groupings within the Hirundininae subfamily, broadly correlating with the type of nest built. The groups are the "core martins" including burrowing species like the Sand Martin
Sand Martin
The Sand Martin is a migratory passerine bird in the swallow family. It has a wide range in summer, embracing practically the whole of Europe and the Mediterranean countries, part of northern Asia and also North America. It winters in eastern and southern Africa, South America and South Asia...
, the "nest-adopters", with birds like the Tree Swallow
Tree Swallow
The Tree Swallow, Tachycineta bicolor, is a migratory passerine bird that breeds in North America and winters in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. It is a very rare vagrant to western Europe....
which utilise natural cavities, and the "mud nest builders". The Cecropsis species construct a closed mud nest and therefore belong to the latter group. It is believed that the evolutionary sequence is from species that make open cup nests (Hirundo
Hirundo
The bird genus Hirundo is a group of passerines in the family Hirundinidae . These are the typical swallows, including the widespread Barn Swallow. Many of this group have blue backs, red on the face and sometimes the rump or nape, and whitish or rufous underparts...
and Ptyonoprogne
Ptyonoprogne
The crag martins are three species of small passerine birds in the genus Ptyonoprogne of the swallow family. They are the Eurasian Crag Martin , the Rock Martin and the Dusky Crag Martin . They are closely related to each other, and have formerly sometimes been considered to be one species...
), through Delichon
Delichon
Delichon is a small genus of passerine birds that belongs to the swallow family and contains three species named as house martins. These are chunky, bull-headed and short-tailed birds, blackish-blue above with a contrasting white rump, and with white or grey underparts. They have feathering on the...
house martins with closed nests, to Cecropis and Petrochelidon
Petrochelidon
Petrochelidon is a genus of birds known as cliff-nesting swallows.It contains the following species:-Species in taxonomic order:* Red-throated Cliff Swallow * Preuss's Cliff Swallow...
, which have retort-like
Retort
In a chemistry laboratory, a retort is a glassware device used for distillation or dry distillation of substances. It consists of a spherical vessel with a long downward-pointing neck. The liquid to be distilled is placed in the vessel and heated...
closed nests with an entrance tunnel.
The Red-rumped Swallow was formally described by Finnish-Swedish clergyman, explorer and natural scientist Erik Laxmann in 1769 as Hirundo daurica, using a specimen from Mount Schlangen near Zmeinogorsk
Zmeinogorsk
Zmeinogorsk is a town and the administrative center of Zmeinogorsky District of Altai Krai, Russia, located on the Korbolikha Aley's tributary) and Zmeyevka Rivers. Population: It was founded in 1736 and granted town status in 1952....
Russia. It is now usually placed in the genus Cecropis created by German scientist Friedrich Boie
Friedrich Boie
Friedrich Boie was a German scientist and brother of Heinrich Boie. He was born at Meldorf in Holstein and died at Kiel....
in 1826, although it is arguable how distinct this genus is from Hirundo, and some authorities retain it in that genus. The genus name Cecropis is taken from that of an Athenian tribe, who were themselves named for the half-dragon mythical Attic king Cecrops I
Cecrops I
Cecrops was a mythical king of Athens who is said to have reigned for fifty-six years. The name is not of Greek origin according to Strabo, or it might mean 'face with a tail': it is said that, born from the earth itself, he had his top half shaped like a man and the bottom half in serpent or...
. The specific daurica is derived from Dauria
Transbaikal
Transbaikal, Trans-Baikal, Transbaikalia , or Dauria is a mountainous region to the east of or "beyond" Lake Baikal in Russia. The alternative name, Dauria, is derived from the ethnonym of the Daur people. It stretches for almost 1000 km from north to south from the Patomskoye Plateau and North...
, a mountainous region to the east of Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal is the world's oldest at 30 million years old and deepest lake with an average depth of 744.4 metres.Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the...
in Russia. the alternative genus Hirundo is the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
word for "swallow".
This species is believed to form a superspecies complex with Hirundo striolata. The widely distributed population shows a lot of variation and several have been named as subspecies. Many of these are migratory and overlap in their wintering ranges and field identification of these forms is not reliable. The Sri Lankan breeding population hyperythra is a resident. The underparts are deep chestnut and the nuchal collar is not well marked. The populations in mainland India,, erythropygia has the rump patch uniform dark chestnut without an dark shaft-streaks. The tail fork is shallow and the white patch on the inner web of the outer-tail feathers is indistinct. Populations of japonica breed in eastern Asia and winter in Thailand, Burma, India and northern Australia. They are heavily streaked on the underside and have faint streaks on the rump. The populations along the Himalayas nipalensis migrate to peninsular India in winter and breed from Kulu in the west to Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh in the east. This population has the rump paler with dark shaft streaks. Subspecies rufula of Southern Europe, the Iberian Peninsula east to Baluchistan and Kashmir is resident and winters further south. The chestnut of rump fades to white towards the tail base. The nominate population breeds in Mongolia and Trans-Baikailia wintering in South and Southeast Asia. Subspecies gephyra of inner Mongolia is considered indistinguishable from the nominate subspecies. The African populations include domicella of Senegal, Gambia to Ethiopia; kumboensis from the highlands of Sierra Leone and Cameroon; melanocrissus of the Ethiopian highlands and emini of Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Zambia. Many of the variations are separable only on tail and wing lengths and these vary with overlap across populations.
Distribution and habitat
The Red-rumped Swallow breeds across southern Europe and Asia east to southern SiberiaSiberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
and Japan, These populations, along with Moroccan birds, are migratory, wintering in sub-Saharan
Sahara
The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...
Africa or south Asia. There are resident races in Africa in a broad belt from West Africa east to Ethiopia and then south to Tanzania, and most Indian and Sri Lanka breeders are also year-round residents. The African and Asian subspecies may undertake local seasonal movements. This species is a regular vagrant outside its breeding range.
Behaviour and ecology
These swallows are usually found over grassland where they hawk insects. They may sometimes take advantage of grass fires and grazing cattle that flush insects into the air.Breeding
Delichon
Delichon is a small genus of passerine birds that belongs to the swallow family and contains three species named as house martins. These are chunky, bull-headed and short-tailed birds, blackish-blue above with a contrasting white rump, and with white or grey underparts. They have feathering on the...
and Petrochelidon
Petrochelidon
Petrochelidon is a genus of birds known as cliff-nesting swallows.It contains the following species:-Species in taxonomic order:* Red-throated Cliff Swallow * Preuss's Cliff Swallow...
genera, but colonial breeding is not inevitable; most Cecropis species are solitary nesters.
Conservation status
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the organisation responsible for assessing the conservation status of species. A species is assessed as subject to varying levels of threat if it has a small, fragmented or declining range, or if the total population is less than 10,000 mature individuals, or numbers have dropped by more than 10% in ten years or with a continuing decline generations. Red-rumped Swallow has a huge range and a population numbered in millions. It is not known to be seriously declining in range or numbers, so it is classed as Least Concern.The Red-rumped Swallow is extending its range northward in Europe, colonising France and Romania in recent decades. The European population is estimated as 100,000 to 430,000 breeding pairs or 300,000 to 1,290,000 individuals.