Dusky Crag Martin

The dusky crag martin is a small swallow-family bird about 13 cm long, with a broad body and wings and a short square tail with small white patches near the tips of most feathers. It has sooty-brown upperparts and slightly paler underparts, with a streaked pale dull rufous chin, throat and foreneck. The sexes are alike, and juveniles have rufous-grey tips to the upperpart and wing plumage. The two subspecies are resident breeding birds from the Indian subcontinent to south-western China and the northern parts of Thailand, Vietnam and Laos (Wikipedia, general species account).

It nests under a cliff overhang or on a man-made structure, building a neat half-cup mud nest with a soft lining. It does not form large breeding colonies but is more gregarious outside the breeding season, feeding on a wide variety of insects caught near cliff faces. Both adults incubate the two to four eggs and feed the chicks. SoIB 2023 rates it a Moderate conservation priority, a resident of non-specialised habitat with a Very Large range of about 1.11 million km² and a decline of about 38% over the long term (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).