Red Rumped Swallow

I went shopping with Lisa today and soon became stir crazy, so at 2.00pm I had a little diversion to Gwithian/ St Gothian Sands and that was the right decision. As soon as I arrived I noticed a dozen Swallows quickly noting one with different markings. Once I got the binoculars on it I recognised it as a Red Rumped Swallow and armed only with the Nikon Coolpix I set about nailing a photograph. A phone call to John Swan and Steve Rogers was enough to alert a few local birders and it was seen again at Marazion.

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. This passage was Referenced from wikipaedia



The two superb images below of a Black Tail Godwit in full summer plumage were taken by John Swan, so thank you indeed John for allowing me to post them on the blog. The equipment used was a Panasonic Lumix. All the images on this post captured by compact cameras.

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