Description
Striated Swallow is 19 cm long with a deeply forked tail. It has blue upperparts other than a reddish collar (sometimes absent) and streaked chestnut rump. The face and underparts are white with heavy dark streaking. The wing are brown. The sexes are alike but juveniles are duller and browner, with a paler rump and shorter outer tail feathers.
There are four races:
- C. s. striolata breeds in Taiwan, The Philippines and Indonesia.
- C. s. mayri breeds from northeastern India to northwestern Myanmar. It has broader streaks than nominate striolata.
- C. s. stanfordi breeds from northeastern Myanmar to northern Thailand. It has broad streaks.
- C. s. vernayi breeds locally in western Thailand. It is more rufous below than the nominate race, and is only faintly streaked on the rump.
The contact call is pin, the alarm is chi-chi-chi, and the song is a soft twittering.
This species, particularly subspecies mayri is very similar to Red-rumped Swallow of the race japonicus, but is larger, more heavily streaked, and has a less distinct neck collar.
Read more about this topic: Striated Swallow
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“It is possible—indeed possible even according to the old conception of logic—to give in advance a description of all ‘true’ logical propositions. Hence there can never be surprises in logic.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)