Purple swallow
| Purple swallow | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Purple swallow ( Progne subis ) |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Progne subis | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1766) |
The purple swallow ( Progne subis ) is an American songbird species.
features
With a length of 20 cm, the purple swallow is the largest representative of the swallows in North America. While the male has a shiny metallic black-blue plumage, the female is colored black-blue on the top and gray on the underside. The young birds, gray-brown above and whitish below, have purple feathers in the first winter. The tail of the purple swallow is forked. It catches insects in the air and even drinks in flight by flying close to the surface of the water and taking in water with its beak.
Occurrence
The purple swallow breeds from southern Canada to Mexico and winters in the Amazon basin. It lives in different habitats, both urban and agricultural areas as well as open forests and rainforests.
Reproduction
While the purple swallow breeds almost exclusively in nesting boxes in the east, elsewhere it uses abandoned woodpecker holes, holes in cacti and trees and even cliffs for nesting. The breeding pairs, which stay together for life, build a bowl-shaped nest out of mud and plant material. The female incubates up to seven eggs alone for around two weeks. The male again helps with the rearing of the young birds. These fledged after four weeks, but the parents provided them with food for another two weeks.
Web links
- Progne subis in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2008. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2008. Accessed January 31 of 2009.
- Videos, photos and sound recordings for Progne subis in the Internet Bird Collection
- 10-minute documentary about the development from egg to first flight (June to July 2017)
- 13-minute summary of the development of a nest from May to July 2018
- Purple Martin NestCam 2020 A live webcam located in Erie, Pennsylvania , at the headquarters of a bird protection association