Pacific Swallow

The Pacific swallow is a small swallow 13 cm long that breeds in tropical southern Asia and the islands of the south Pacific. It has a blue-black back and crown with browner wings and tail, a red face and throat and dusky underparts, and differs from the barn swallow and the closely related welcome swallow in its shorter, less forked tail (Wikipedia, general species account).

It builds a neat cup-shaped nest of mud pellets collected in the beak, lined with softer material, under a cliff ledge or on a building, bridge or tunnel, and lays two or three eggs. A fast flyer, it feeds on insects, especially flies, while airborne. SoIB 2023 lists it as a Western Ghats and Sri Lanka endemic and rates it a Moderate conservation priority, a resident of non-specialised habitat with a Restricted range of about 32,600 km² and insufficient data on trends (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).