Family HIRUNDINIDAE Rafinesque, 1815

Museums

Regional Maps

• Hirundidae Rafinesque, C.S. 1815. Analyse de la nature, ou tableau de l'univers et des corps organises. Palermo (Italy) : Privately Published 224 pp. [Date published April to July].

  Type genus:

   Hirundo Linnaeus, 1758.

Introduction

The cosmopolitan family of swallows and martins worldwide comprises 84 species in 20 genera. Australian representation is eight percent of the total (Dickinson 2003), there being seven species (including eight ultrataxa) in four genera. Only one these species, the White-backed Swallow, Cheramoeca leucosternus, is endemic; and two, the Barn Swallow, Hirundo rustica, and the Red-rumped Swallow, H. daurica, appear to have established regular migration patterns to northern Australia. Another, the Pacific Swallow, H. tahitica is thought to occur on islands in the Torres Strait (Shodde & Mason 1999). The remaining three species are common, with most populations showing a migration pattern away from colder winter temperatures in southern Australia.

Hirundinids are all aerial feeders, hawking their insectivorous prey on long wings. Their feet are short and weak, allowing them only to sit on horizontal perches or cling, like swifts, to vertical surfaces. Swallows and martins are gregarious or may be found in small groups, or occasionally as solitary birds. Aggregations may assemble at swarms of flying insect hatchings. They occupy a variety of habitats including alpine meadow, bare stony plain, broadleaf thickets and shrubland, woodlands, chenopodiaceous steppe, wet and dry sclerophyll forests, human habitation, lignum or cane grass swamp, heaths, mangrove or mangal, marine shore-tidal sandflat, open freshwater wetland, open sea, grassfields, samphire salt marsh, and rainforests.

Vagrant swallows; H. rustica, H. daurica and H. tahitica are not known to nest in Australia. The remaining local populations have independent and distinctive nesting procedures. C. leucosternus establishes its nest in a shallow tunnel normally placed in a creek bank; H. neoxena has a cup-shaped mud nest attached to a vertical surface; and of the two martins, Petrochelidon ariel has a mud construction built in a bottle shape and placed under a rock overhang or the eave of a building or in culverts under bridges; whereas nests of P. nigricans are normally built in a hollow limb or in a building cavity that has a small entrance. The nests are lined with feathers and fine fibres. Eggs have a white base colour and each may be finely dotted with red, brown, or grey, either overall or about the larger end as a cap.

Excluded Taxa

Vagrant Species

CAVS:8570
HIRUNDINIDAE: Cecropis (Lillia) daurica japonica (Temminck & Schlegel, 1847) [Eastern Red-rumped Swallow; vagrant to Christmas Island and Northern Australia - WA, NT & Qld]

CAVS:0787
HIRUNDINIDAE: Cecropis (Lillia) daurica (Linnaeus, 1771) [Red-rumped Swallow; vagrant to Christmas Island and Northern Australia - WA, NT & Qld] — Christidis, L. & Boles, W.E. 2008. Systematics and Taxonomy of Australian Birds. Melbourne : CSIRO Publishing 288 pp. [38, 205, 206]

CAVS:8034
HIRUNDINIDAE: Delichon dasypus dasypus (Bonaparte, 1850) [vagrant to Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands]

CAVS:0757
HIRUNDINIDAE: Delichon dasypus (Bonaparte, 1850) [Asian House Martin] — Christidis, L. & Boles, W.E. 2008. Systematics and Taxonomy of Australian Birds. Melbourne : CSIRO Publishing 288 pp. [38, 206] (vagrant on Christmas Island, records on Cocos (Keeling) Islands are unconfirmed)

Diagnosis

'Structurally, distinctive features are the long, swift-like manus and short humerus, with only an incipient second tricipital fossa, as well as much narrowed temporal fossae, pin-like maxillo-palatine processes, doubled ectethmoid foramina and multiple orbital perforations in the front of the cranium (Australian hirundinines)' (Schodde & Mason 1999).

Diagnosis References

Schodde, R. & Mason, I.J. 1999. The Directory of Australian Birds : Passerines. A Taxonomic and Zoogeographic Atlas of the Biodiversity of Birds in Australia and its Territories. Collingwood, Australia : CSIRO Publishing x 851 pp.

General References

Schodde, R. & Mason, I.J. 1999. The Directory of Australian Birds : Passerines. A Taxonomic and Zoogeographic Atlas of the Biodiversity of Birds in Australia and its Territories. Collingwood, Australia : CSIRO Publishing x 851 pp.

History of changes