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White-Bibbed Swallow | Hirundo nigrita
Zwarte zwaluw | Golondrina Negrita
The White-Bibbed Swallow is a stocky, dark steel-blue swallow of rivers in the Guineo-Congolian rainforest, with a small white throat patch. In the region it occurs only in the far north of Angola, where it hunts low over forest rivers and rests on snags in the water.
Voice
A soft, short chip or tweet, often from a perch above the water, and a soft, chattering twitter; not loud.
Recording: Étienne Leroy — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12–13 cm, compact and short-tailed, with a shallowly forked tail without streamers. The whole plumage is deep glossy steel-blue to blue-black, apart from a small, sharply defined white patch on the throat, which shows as a bib at close range. White spots on the inner webs of the outer feathers are visible in the spread tail. The underwing is dark. The sexes are alike; juveniles are duller and browner, with a smaller or dirty-white throat patch. The flight is low and fast, often just over the water surface, and the bird lands frequently on branches, rocks and logs in the river.
Confusion species
Black Saw-Wing Psalidoprocne pristoptera is dull black, with a deeply forked tail, no white throat and a slow, fluttering flight along forest edges. The male White-Headed Saw-Wing Psalidoprocne albiceps has a white head. Blue Swallow Hirundo atrocaerulea lacks a white throat, has long streamers and lives in montane grassland. Angola Swallow Hirundo angolensis and Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica have a rufous throat and a pale belly. The dark form of Brown-Throated Martin Riparia paludicola is brown without gloss.
Habitat
Rivers and broad streams with open water in or along rainforest and gallery forest, also lakes and quiet backwaters with fallen trees and rocks in the water. It builds an open nest bowl of mud and grass against a rock, a tree trunk or an artificial structure, from just above the water to a few metres up. It hunts insects low over the water, usually singly or in pairs, and defends a territory.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region only in northern Angola: in Cabinda and along forest rivers in the northern lowlands and northern provinces; the exact southern limit is poorly known. Beyond the region in the rainforest belt of West and Central Africa, from Sierra Leone to DR Congo and western Uganda. Resident, with at most minor local movements.
How and when to look
Search along forest-fringed rivers in Cabinda or northern Angola, for example from a bridge or a boat; the bird often sits on a branch or rock just above the water. Wait for it to turn: the small white throat patch on an otherwise dark body is the decisive feature.
Conservation status
Not threatened; fairly common across its large range, but rare and poorly studied in the region. Deforestation and the pollution or silting of forest rivers through mining and logging may play a local role.
Scientific name
Hirundo nigrita | Gray, 1845
Gray described the species in 1845 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Hirundo was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Hirundo is the ordinary Latin word for 'swallow'. nigrita is Latin for 'blackened, black' — for the almost entirely blue-black plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Niger River (designated later; originally no locality).