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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 insectivores, such as the related swallows and the unrelated swifts (order Apodiformes). They have blue upperparts and dusky underparts. They resemble barn swallows, 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 insects 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 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.〔Prior to the Dickinson paper, the type location had been listed as "the Sung-hua Chiang, Heilungkiang, China near its confluence with the Amur River" as for example in Turner (1989) pp. 201–204〕 It is now usually placed in the genus ''Cecropis'' created by German scientist Friedrich Boie in 1826,〔 column 971〕 although it is arguable how distinct this genus is from ''Hirundo'',〔Turner (1989) p. 9〕 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, and are now usually considered a distinct species, the Sri Lanka swallow. 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Red-rumped swallow」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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