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Tree Swallow | Tachycineta bicolor
Boomzwaluw | Golondrina bicolor
The Tree Swallow is a North American swallow that winters farther north than most other swallows. Part of the population reaches the northern and western Caribbean in winter, where numbers vary greatly from year to year. Besides insects it eats berries, especially of bayberries Myrica, which helps it through cool spells better than other swallows.
Voice
A clear, liquid tsleet or cheet; flocks give a bubbling twitter.
Recording: AUDEVARD Aurélien — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12–14 cm, stocky, with fairly broad, triangular wings and a short, slightly notched tail. The adult male is glossy blue-green above and pure white below; the dark cap reaches below the eye. Wings and tail are blackish, the underwing grey. First-year females are largely brown above with a variable amount of blue-green; older females resemble the male but are duller. Juveniles are grey-brown above with a faint greyish breast band.
Confusion species
Bahama Swallow Tachycineta cyaneoviridis has a deeply forked tail, a greener back and white underwing-coverts. Bank Swallow Riparia riparia is smaller, with a sharply defined brown breast band. Northern Rough-winged Swallow Stelgidopteryx serripennis is plain brown above with a grey-brown throat and breast. Caribbean Martin Progne dominicensis is much larger, with a forked tail and a dark throat.
Habitat
Hunts in flocks over freshwater marshes, ponds, rice fields, mangroves and coastal lagoons, often low over the water. In cool weather or when insects are scarce it eats berries in coastal scrub. It sometimes roosts in large numbers in reedbeds or mangroves. It breeds in tree cavities and nest boxes in North America, not in the Caribbean.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Winter visitor to the Bahamas, Cuba, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, common in some winters and scarce in others. On Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands scarce to rare; in the Lesser Antilles, the ABC Islands and Trinidad and Tobago a rare visitor. It breeds in Alaska, Canada and the northern United States and winters from the southern United States to Central America and north-western South America.
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best from December to March over marshes, ponds and rice fields on Cuba and in the northern Bahamas. Large swallow flocks in midwinter are often of this species, since most other swallows are then in South America.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species is numerous and makes wide use of nest boxes in North America; numbers have declined regionally.
Scientific name
Tachycineta bicolor | (Vieillot, 1808)
Vieillot described the species in 1808 as Hirundo bicolor; 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. bicolor is Latin for 'two-coloured', after the glossy blue-green upperparts and white underparts. The specimen the first description was based on came from New York (USA).