Wire-tailed Swallow

How to identify

Field marks

1. Outermost tail feathers extremely long, like 2 wires
2. Crown chestnut
3. Back bright blue
4. Belly bright white

Male, female and young

Sexes similar, but female has shorter “wires”; juvenile lacks tail wires and has a dark brown crown.

Where and when it's recorded

Wire-tailed Swallow has been recorded at 631 of the 8,171 birding hotspots we track, in 49 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. KattampallyIndia1,897 records
2. Bharatpur – Keoladeo Ghana NPIndia1,784 records
3. Bhandup Pumping StationIndia1,238 records

Countries and regions with the most records

IndiaKenyaSouth AfricaTanzaniaBotswanaZambiaUgandaGambia

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The wire-tailed swallow (Hirundo smithii) is a small passerine bird in the swallow family. It has two subspecies: H. s. smithii, which occurs throughout Africa, and H. s. filifera, which is found in southern and southeastern Asia. It is mainly resident, but populations in Pakistan and northern India migrate further south in winter.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

Questions