Bank Swallow | Riparia riparia

Voice

A dry, rasping trrsh or chrr, in flocks a constant twittering; at the colony a soft, scratchy chatter. Alarm a sharper brrit.

Identification

12–13 cm. Dull brown above and white below, with a sharply defined brown breast band separating the white throat from the white belly. The tail is short and shallowly forked, without white spots; the rump is brown like the back. The underwing is dark grey-brown. The flight is low, fluttering and jerky, with many short turns just above the water. Sexes alike; juveniles have pale fringes above and a rather fainter breast band. The Nile form shelleyi is smaller and paler, with a narrower, sometimes broken band.

Confusion species

Brown-throated Martin (Riparia paludicola), in Morocco, has a uniform grey-brown throat and breast without a band. Pale Martin (Riparia diluta), a rare winter visitor to the Gulf states, is paler grey-brown, with a faint, diffuse breast band, a paler underwing and a barely forked tail; note also the dark lores against the pale forehead. Juvenile Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica) have a dull rufous throat, a blue-black, often incomplete band and a longer tail. Pale Crag Martin (Ptyonoprogne obsoleta) and Eurasian Crag-Martin (Ptyonoprogne rupestris) are bulkier, lack the breast band and show white spots in the spread tail.

Habitat

Breeds colonially in vertical sand and loam banks: riverbanks, eroding gully sides, sand pits and road cuttings, always near water. On passage and in winter it hunts over rivers, lakes, reedbeds, sewage ponds, fish farms and irrigated fields, also over desert oases and pivot fields. Feeds on small flying insects, mainly midges.

Range and movements

Breeds locally in northern Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia along rivers and in pits, and along the Euphrates and Tigris in Syria and Iraq; in Lebanon and Israel mainly a passage migrant. In Egypt the resident form shelleyi breeds along the Nile, from the Delta to Aswan and Lake Nasser. On passage common throughout the region, from the Saharan oases to the Arabian Peninsula; in spring in huge numbers at Eilat, in the Jordan Valley and in Sinai, in autumn also in large numbers in the Gulf states and Kuwait. Small numbers winter in Egypt and southern Arabia. Beyond the region it breeds across Europe, Asia and North America and winters in sub-Saharan Africa and South America.

• Resident
• Summer visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
• Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
• Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

How and when to look

In April and early May over the ponds and saltpans of Eilat or in the Jordan Valley, where flocks of Bank Swallows hunt low over the water with Barn Swallows. On a calm morning over a sewage pond in the Gulf states it pays to scan the flock: a Pale Martin may be among them.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened, but numbers fluctuate strongly with drought in the Sahel. In the region breeding banks are lost to bank reinforcement, sand extraction and dams; in Israel, where it used to breed, it has all but disappeared as a breeding bird.

Scientific name

Riparia riparia | (Linnaeus, 1758)

Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Hirundo riparia; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Riparia was introduced in 1817 by Forster. Riparia comes from Latin riparius 'of the riverbank', from ripa 'riverbank', after the nest burrows these martins dig in steep banks. The specific name repeats the genus name. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.