Salangana lustrosa

Identificación

This bird is shiny black-blue above, including its rump; sometimes looks black and hooded. Chest black; belly to flanks white with fine black speckles at margins. Wing tips are rounded; underwing is black. Tail rounded with shallow notch and tiny white panels. It is so similar to the white-rumped swiftlet that both its upperparts and underparts must be seen to distinguish between the two. It is 9 to 11.5 cm (3.5 to 4.5 in) in length. Its voice is a soft twittering.

Taxonomía

The glossy swiftlet was described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Hirundo esculenta. The type locality is Ambon Island, one of the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. The specific epithet esculenta is from esculentus the Latin word for "edible".<p>There are 17 recognised subspecies:<p>Seven taxa that are now recognised as species were previously considered as subspecies of the glossy swiftlet. They were raised to species status based on a detailed analysis of the swiftlets in the genus Collocalia published in 2017. The promoted taxa are:

Nombre científico

Collocalia esculenta

Autoridad

(Linnaeus, 1758)

Orden

Apodiformes

Familia

Apodidae

Género

Collocalia

Distribución y hábitat

The glossy swiftlet is known from Indonesia, Timor, Brunei, Christmas Island, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. It is a vagrant to Australia. It is not a migrant.

Migración

Resident species

Comportamiento

The glossy swiftlet nests inside caves and buildings, creating a nest on a vertical or under a horizontal surface by secreting a sticky gel and attaching a kind of string-like grass to the surface. It is seen flying over forests, streams, rivers and roads catching insects in flight.<p>Glossy swiftlets have been considered as possible foster parents for restoring the population of the endangered edible-nest swiftlet in the Andaman Islands.

Conservación

Tendencia poblacional

stable