#RED RUMPED PATCH#

They may sometimes take advantage of grass fires and grazing cattle that flush insects into the air. These swallows are usually found over grassland where they hawk insects. This species is a regular vagrant outside its breeding range. The African and Asian subspecies may undertake local seasonal movements. 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. These populations, along with Moroccan birds, are migratory, wintering in sub-Saharan Africa or south Asia. The red-rumped swallow breeds across southern Europe and Asia east to southern Siberia and Japan. Many of the variations are separable only on tail and wing lengths and these vary with overlap across populations. emini of Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Zambia. melanocrissus of the Ethiopian highlands and C. kumboensis from the highlands of Sierra Leone and Cameroon C. gephyra of inner Mongolia is considered indistinguishable from the nominate subspecies. The nominate population breeds in Mongolia and Trans-Baikailia wintering in South and Southeast Asia. The chestnut of rump fades to white towards the tail base. rufula of Southern Europe, the Iberian Peninsula east to Baluchistan and Kashmir is resident and winters further south. This population has the rump paler with dark shaft streaks. nipalensis, migrates to peninsular India in winter and breeds from Kulu in the west to Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh in the east. They are heavily streaked on the underside and have faint streaks on the rump. japonica breeds in eastern Asia and winters in Thailand, Burma, India and northern Australia.

#RED RUMPED PATCH#

The tail fork is shallow and the white patch on the inner web of the outer-tail feathers is indistinct. erythropygia, has the rump patch uniform dark chestnut without any dark shaft-streaks. The underparts are deep chestnut and the nuchal collar is not well marked. The Sri Lankan breeding population hyperythra is a resident, and are now usually considered a distinct species, the Sri Lanka swallow. Many of these are migratory and overlap in their wintering ranges and field identification of these forms is not reliable. The widely distributed population shows a lot of variation and several have been named as subspecies. This species is believed to form a superspecies complex with Cecropis striolata. Some authorities consider the West African swallow to be a subspecies of the red-rumped swallow. The alternative genus Hirundo is the Latin word for 'swallow'. The specific daurica is derived from Dauria, a mountainous region to the east of Lake Baikal in Russia. Boie's genus name Cecropis is from the Ancient Greek for an Athenian woman. 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 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. Many hundreds can be seen at a time on the plains of India. They do not normally form large breeding colonies, but are gregarious outside the breeding season. They normally nest under cliff overhangs in their mountain homes, but will readily adapt to buildings such as mosques and bridges. 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 are fast fliers and they swoop on insects while airborne. They lack a breast band, but have black undertails.

They resemble barn swallows, but are darker below and have pale or reddish rumps, face and neck collar. They have blue upperparts and dusky underparts. Red-rumped swallows are somewhat similar in habits and appearance to the other aerial insectivores, such as the related swallows and the unrelated swifts (order Apodiformes). They winter in Africa or India and are vagrants to Christmas Island and northern Australia. The Indian and African birds are resident, but European and other Asian birds are migratory. It breeds in open hilly country of temperate southern Europe and Asia from Portugal and Spain to Japan, India, Sri Lanka and tropical Africa. The red-rumped swallow ( Cecropis daurica) is a small passerine bird in the swallow family.

Red rumped