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Artamus
Sign in to saveWoodswallows are soft-plumaged, sombre-coloured passerine birds in the genus Artamus. The woodswallows are either treated as a subfamily, Artaminae, in an expanded family Artamidae (also including the subfamily Cracticinae), or as the only genus in that family (with the butcherbirds, currawongs, and allies placed in a separate family, Cracticidae). The generic name, which in turn gives rise to the family name, is derived from the Ancient Greek artamos, meaning butcher or murder. The name was given due to their perceived similarity to shrikes. A former common name for the group was "swallow-sta
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6 sectionsContents
- Taxonomy
- Distribution
- Description
- Species
- References
- External links
Woodswallows are soft-plumaged, sombre-coloured passerine birds in the genus Artamus. The woodswallows are either treated as a subfamily, Artaminae, in an expanded family Artamidae (also including the subfamily Cracticinae), or as the only genus in that family (with the butcherbirds, currawongs, and allies placed in a separate family, Cracticidae). The generic name, which in turn gives rise to the family name, is derived from the Ancient Greek artamos, meaning butcher or murder. The name was given due to their perceived similarity to shrikes. A former common name for the group was "swallow-starlings".
==Taxonomy== The genus Artamus was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist Louis Vieillot to accommodate a single species, the "Langraien", that had been described in 1770 by the French naturalist, the Comte de Buffon. The "Langraien" is the white-breasted woodswallow that had been assigned the binomial name Lanius leucorhynchus by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1771. It is the type species of the genus. The genus name is from Ancient Greek αρταμος/artamos meaning "butcher" or "murderer".