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Golden Swallow | Tachycineta euchrysea
Goudzwaluw | Golondrina dorada
The Golden Swallow is a small swallow endemic to the Greater Antilles. The Jamaican subspecies Tachycineta euchrysea euchrysea has not been seen with certainty since about 1950 and is considered extinct; the species now survives only in the highlands of Hispaniola, as subspecies T. e. sclateri. It is mainly found in open pine forest, hunting in small groups over ridges and valleys.
Voice
A soft, two-note chee-weet, often repeated.
Recording: Zsombor Károlyi — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12–13 cm, slender, with a distinctly forked tail. Upperparts are glossy green with a bronze to golden sheen; wings and tail are blackish with a blue-green gloss. Underparts are pure white. The female has a greyish-mottled breast and duller upperparts. Juveniles are grey-brown above with little gloss and have a greyish breast.
Confusion species
Caribbean Martin Progne dominicensis is much larger, with a dark throat and breast. Cave Swallow Petrochelidon fulva has a square tail, a rufous rump and a buffy throat. Tree Swallow Tachycineta bicolor, a scarce winter visitor to Hispaniola mainly in the lowlands, has a barely notched tail and a blue-green back without a golden sheen.
Habitat
Open forest of Hispaniolan pine Pinus occidentalis, montane grassland, clearings and burnt forest in the mountains, mostly above 800 m; sometimes over montane broadleaf forest and mountain villages. It eats flying insects. It nests in cavities in dead trees, old woodpecker holes, rock crevices and under eaves. The breeding season runs from April to July.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Resident in the mountains of Hispaniola, mainly in the Cordillera Central and the Sierra de Bahoruco in the Dominican Republic; in Haiti very scarce in the southern highlands, including the Massif de la Selle. Probably extinct on Jamaica: the last certain record dates from around 1950, and an unconfirmed report from 1989 comes from Hardwar Gap. It occurs nowhere else.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The pine forest of Valle Nuevo in the Cordillera Central is a well-known site, especially in the morning when small groups hunt low over clearings. In flight the birds often look dark above; the green and golden sheen shows only in sunlight.
Conservation status
Vulnerable (VU). The population is small, fragmented and declining. Threats are the loss of pine forest to logging, fire and shifting agriculture, and predation by introduced mongooses, cats and rats. On Jamaica the species has probably disappeared.
Scientific name
Tachycineta euchrysea | (Gosse, 1847)
Gosse described the species in 1847 as Hirundo euchrysea; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Tachycineta was introduced in 1851 by Cabanis. Tachycineta is Greek, from takhukinētos 'moving quickly', after the fast, agile flight. euchrysea is Greek, from eu 'good, fine' and khruseos 'golden', after the golden-green sheen of the upperparts. The specimen the first description was based on came from high mountains of central Jamaica.