Barn Swallow

hirundo rustica

Hirundinidae,Hirundininae · Martins, Swallows

Disc 2 · 2001 listed
Disc 3 · 2006 listed
Disc 1 · 2011 listed

The account

Description

14-16.5 cm depending on tail length. A common winter resident. Tail deeply forked, tail feathers blue black with white spots on inner web. Steel blue upper parts with chestnut spot on forehead. Underside buff, throat chestnut.

Immatures have a shorter tail.

The disc records this picture against the bird without a caption. Disc 3 · 2006

Where it was recorded

The discs' own checklists select Barn Swallow at 8 localities.

Historical checklist localities on the disc's own area map — the red dots the original program drew, placed by its recovered projection. Not a range map: it shows the places whose checklists record the bird, nothing more. 1 recorded locality lies beyond the map's edge and is listed below instead.

How the map was made

The original program computed each red dot at display time from the locality's coordinates, using its map library and one of five base maps drawn for the screen widths of the day. That library's projection — an oblique rotation of the sphere about the map's own centre, 23.7°S 47.4°W — was read from the program and checked against the graticule the same program drew into the base maps: it reproduces every grid intersection to within about a pixel. The dots here use that projection on the 1280-pixel base map, with the coordinates the discs record. Nothing was placed by hand, no modern map data was used, and a place whose coordinate is incomplete, out of range or beyond the map's edge is listed rather than guessed.

The discs carried location maps only; none shows a distribution or range.

Voice

Twittering song in vocalization # 1. The common 'wit wit' calls and other related calls are heard on vocalizations # 2 -4.

Behavior

Flies with typical frequent banking and change of direction mostly low over ground and water alone or in small groups; frequently builds large flocks to sleep in reed beds.

Breeding

Breeds in the Northern hemisphere. Barn Swallows have also successfully bred in Argentina between October and April (¹⁴¹). It is therefore possible that breeding occurs in Southeast Brazil.

Habitat and status

Common winter resident. Open country, forest edge, mountain slopes, lake shores etc.

Distribution

Below 1000 meters

Decoded from the disc's own bytes. Each part is shown under the heading the disc files it under, and the wording, spelling and punctuation are the author's.

Vocalizations

Song, Washington, USA., D. S. Herr, LNS63124.
Calls, California, USA, R. S. Little, LNS50710.
Calls, T. A. Parker, Jr., LNS33934.
Calls, Utah, USA, R. Little, R. Angstadt, LNS08060.

Recording files on the disc

440.mp3 Song, Washington, USA., D. S. Herr, LNS63124.
3913.mp3 Calls, California, USA, R. S. Little, LNS50710.
10403.mp3 Calls, T. A. Parker, Jr., LNS33934.
10047.mp3 Calls, Utah, USA, R. Little, R. Angstadt, LNS08060.

More images

The disc records this picture against the bird without a caption. Disc 3 · 2006

Across the three discs

The work was published on three discs — Disc 2 in 2001, Disc 3 in 2006 and Disc 1 in 2011. Where they differ, that is a difference between historical releases, and it is never merged away. The 2011 disc is not treated as correcting the earlier ones.

Which discs list this bird

Disc 2 · 2001 — in this disc's bird list
Disc 3 · 2006 — in this disc's bird list
Disc 1 · 2011 — in this disc's bird list

How that was established

Disc 2 · 2001: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1
Disc 3 · 2006: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1
Disc 1 · 2011: aux_nonzero;local_checklist_byte45_flag_1

The disc's own record fields that place the bird on its list: a non-empty entry in the species table, and the byte that marks it as selected on a local checklist.

The account in the Disc 1 · 2011 revision

The 2011 Disc 1 revision carries this account text unchanged from the Disc 3 release.

The work's own taxonomy

The discs carried three parallel name schemes. All three are shown as recovered; none is a modern taxonomy and none has been updated.

Scheme	Scientific name	English name	Family
WORLD	hirundo rustica	Barn Swallow	Hirundinidae,Hirundininae
CLEMENTS	hirundo rustica	Barn Swallow	Hirundinidae,Hirundininae
AOU_HM	hirundo rustica	Barn Swallow	Hirundinidae,Hirundininae

Source details

Identifier on this site: seb_species_0311
Account identifier: seb_account_0311
Account number on the disc: 311
Source edition: CD03 / 2006 package
Original taxonomy scheme: WORLD
Structure status: heuristic; decoded_account_text and segment JSON remain authoritative