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Brown-Throated Martin | Riparia paludicola
Vale oeverzwaluw | Avión Paludícola Africano
The Brown-Throated Martin is the resident among the small brown martins of the region. It breeds colonially in self-dug tunnels in sandy riverbanks, often in the dry winter when water levels are low, and almost always hunts over water.
Colour forms
Voice
A soft, high twitter and a dry svrr or chrr in flight; at the colony a constant chatter of soft, rasping notes.
Recording: Ken Behrens — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12 cm, small and compact, with a short, shallowly forked tail lacking white spots. The upperparts are plain grey-brown. In the common form the throat and breast are dull grey-brown, merging without a sharp border into a white belly and white undertail coverts; in a dark form, mainly in eastern South Africa, the whole underside is brown, sometimes with a small pale patch on the belly. The underwing is dark brown. The sexes are alike; juveniles have cinnamon fringes. The flight is fluttering and jinking, low over water.
Confusion species
Sand Martin Riparia riparia has a white throat and a sharp brown breast band. Banded Martin Neophedina cincta is larger, with a white throat, a broad breast band and a short white supercilium. Large Rock Martin Ptyonoprogne fuligula is larger and bulkier, with a rufous-brown throat, white spots in the spread tail and a slow, gliding flight along rocks and buildings. The dark form may suggest a saw-wing, but Black Saw-Wing Psalidoprocne pristoptera is black with a deeply forked tail.
Habitat
Rivers with steep sandy banks, dams, lakes, vleis and marshes; sometimes over fields and pastures near water. It digs nest tunnels about half a metre long in sand or loam faces, also in road cuttings, sand pits and embankments. It hunts small flying insects, often together with other swallows.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Across much of the region: South Africa (including the Western Cape, for example along the Breede and Olifants), Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Angola, northern and eastern Botswana and northern Namibia; largely absent from the dry Kalahari and the Namib. Beyond the region in much of sub-Saharan Africa, in Morocco and on Madagascar.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Scan steep sandy banks of larger rivers for round holes; colonies are active mainly from May to September. Over water, the combination of small size, a plain brown throat without a breast band and a short tail without white spots is decisive.
Conservation status
Not threatened and locally common. Colonies can be lost to floods, sand mining and bank stabilisation, but the species often finds new nesting faces quickly, including in artificial excavations.
Scientific name
Riparia paludicola | (Vieillot, 1817)
Vieillot described the species in 1817 as Hirundo paludicola; 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. paludicola is Latin for 'marsh-dweller', from palus, paludis 'marsh' and -cola 'dweller', from colere 'to inhabit'. The specimen the first description was based on came from South Africa.