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THE
HONG KONG NATURALIST
The Hong Kong Naturalist, Vol. VI, No. 2.
Vol. VI No. 2.
JULY 1935.
Plate
Hirundo daurica japonica T. & S. (Japanese Striated or Golden-Rumped Swallow).
two upper figures.
Hirde rustica gutturalis Scop. (Eastern House-Swallow), two lower figures.
THE BIRDS OF HONG KONG.
PART XIX.
G. A. C. HERKLOTS.
Family HIRUNDINIDAE (Swallows and Martins).
The Swallows and Martins are swift flying insectivorous birds, catch- ing their prey always on the wing. They have a wide gape, the short triangular bill is hooked at the tip, culmen nearly straight except at the tip, nostrils exposed. They have long and narrow wings with nine primaries, the secondaries are very short. The tail is more or less forked. Their legs are weak and though suitable for perching are not much good for walking, in consequence the birds rarely come to the ground save to bathe in shallew pools and puddles and to pick up pellets of mud for their nests. The Swallows are related to the Flycatchers, Shrikes and Birds-of-Paradise. The Swifts though in some respects superficially like the Swallows (e.g. in their complete mastery of the art of flight) are not even in the same order being in fact closely related to the Hummingbirds and akin to the Nightjars.
HONG KONG SPECIES:-One swallow, the Eastern House-Swallow, Hirundo rustica gutturalis Scop., is a common summer visitor which breeds in the Colony; another the Japanese Striated or Golden-Rumped Swallow, Hirundo daurica japonica T. & S., is a migrant species which spends which a few days or a week or so in the Colony before proceeding northwards to its breeding grounds in China, Manchoukuo and Japan. The Siberian House Martin, Delichon urbica whiteleyi, possibly migrates across the Colony regularly every year but has only once been recognized by us.
DESCRIPTION.
The Eastern House-Swallow L.T. 333. Plate 6, two lower figures. Length about 61⁄2 inches. "Forehead, base of fore crown, chin, and throat chestnut, very dark on forehead and fore crown; lores velvety black, sides of head otherwise glossy black; upper parts steel-blue, bases of hind neck and upper back-feathers white, those of rest of upper parts grey or dark, brown; surface of wings and tail dull black, the wing-coverts and tertiaries glossed with metallic greenish-blue, the tail with a row of white spots near the tips of the inner webs of all the side-rectrices, but not showing unless the tail is spread out; an irregular black band on the upper breast, broken or encroached upon more or less by the chestnut of the throat" "The rest of the underparts are either pure white, or else vinous-rufous or pale brick-red in various light or darker shades. In the rufous-bellied birds the under tail-coverts are all darker than the abdomen, these varieties corresponding with those found in the European Swallow. In the white- bellied variety the under tail-coverts are centred with blackish or brown. The young in first plumage are dull brownish above with very little gloss,
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