- Apus horus
Includes: Loanda Swift
Identification
13-15 cm. Blackish with a white patch on the chin and a white rump. Forked tail.
Similar species
This species is difficult to tell apart from various sympatric and allopatric species such as Little Swift, White-rumped Swift, House Swift, Pacific Swift. (Extralimital species should be considered as many species exhibit vagrancy.) The most consistent character seems to be a more or less pale head with no strong demarcation from the white throat patch. The species often shows pale bars along the coverts of the underwing. See the following for a detailed comparison: Identifying small white-rumped swifts.
Distribution
Sub-Saharan Africa. Patchily distributed in Central Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and from Uganda south to Burundi and Zaire. More widely distributed in the south (South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia).
Locally common in good habitat and not globally threatened.
Taxonomy
The form toulsoni (Loanda Swift) of Zimbabwe and NW Angola is very controversial. Some authorities give full subspecies status, others believe it to be a dark morph of the nominate subspecies. It differs by being almost entirely dark with an ill-defined paler throat (see also here).
Subspecies
This is a monotypic species[1]. Both subspecies fuscobrunneus and toulsoni are synonymised with subspecies horus and the species therefore becomes monotypic. The reason for the synonymy is that both are now considered color morphs and not true subspecies. Either one or the other of those two names were formerly associated with the common name Loanda Swift.
Habitat
Forages aerially over over grassland, woodland and semi-desert.
Behaviour
It builds a flat nest of vegetation and hair, glued with saliva; it is situated at the end of a tunnel (generally excavated by another hole-nesting bird). One to four eggs are incubated for 28 days to hatching, and the fledging period is about 6 weeks.
References
- Clements, J. F., P. C. Rasmussen, T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, A. Spencer, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2023. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2023. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
- Gill, F, D Donsker, and P Rasmussen (Eds). 2023. IOC World Bird List (v 13.2). Doi 10.14344/IOC.ML.13.2. http://www.worldbirdnames.org/
Recommended Citation
- BirdForum Opus contributors. (2024) Horus Swift. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 28 April 2024 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Horus_Swift
External Links
GSearch checked for 2020 platform.1
