Barn Swallow

Also known as Hirundo rustica, swallow

species of bird

OverviewAI-generated

The Barn Swallow, scientifically known as Hirundo rustica, is a species of bird within the family Hirundinidae. It belongs to the order Passeriformes, class Aves, and phylum Chordata. The taxon was described by Linnaeus in 1758 and is the nomenclatural type of the genus Hirundo. Common names for this organism include Rauchschwalbe and Golondrina Común.

This diurnal species has a wingspan of 0.32 and an egg incubation period of 13.5 days, with a typical litter size of 5. Its range includes Brazil, Hefei, China, and the Nanling Mountains. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the Barn Swallow as Least Concern, a status recorded in 2019, although it holds a regional conservation status of Near Threatened. It has received the award of Bird of the Year.

Synthesized by Vinony from 29 facts across 4 sources: Wikidata, IUCN Red List, WoRMS, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Species

Least Concern

barn swallow

Species

PhylumChordata
ClassAves
OrderPasseriformes
FamilyHirundinidae

via IUCN

~32 min read

Encyclopedic overview

The barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) is the most widespread species of swallow in the world, occurring on all continents, with vagrants reported even in Antarctica. It is a distinctive passerine bird with blue upperparts and a long, deeply forked tail. In Anglophone Europe, it is just called the swallow; in northern Europe, it is the only member of family Hirundinidae called a "swallow" rather than a "martin".

There are eight subspecies of barn swallow, which breed across the Northern Hemisphere. Two subspecies (H. r. savignii and H. r. transitiva) have fairly restricted ranges in the Nile valley and eastern Mediterranean, respectively. The other six are more widespread, with winter ranges covering much of the Southern Hemisphere.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Barn Swallow” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.