Hard to swallow

["Tony Russell" <>]

Morning all, here's a bit of a teaser I struck at Wyndham, WA, on 14/06/01 at around 14.30.

 

A single swallow of sorts was present at the Wyndham sewage ponds which in every regard looked like a Welcome Swallow - definitely not a Barn Swallow. It repeatedly flew around the ponds area feeding and regularly settled back in the same area of levee bank - we watched it through scopes at about 50metres for about 30mins in bright sunlight.

Problem was, it was some thousands of km out of normal range for Welcomes.

Notes we took are:

Head and back blue

Frons and throat bright chestnut (very bright)

Secondaries grey

Primaries a lighter grey-brown

Chest and belly pale grey, lightly mottled darker

Deeply forked long tail streamers.

White spots to under tail feathers

Undertail coverts had dusky chevrons

And the jizz didn't somehow seem quite right for a Welcome, but this was hard to define.

 

So, if it wasn't a Welcome well out of range, what else might it have been? Any ideas.

Tony Russell

SA birding by 4WD 
phone: 08 8337 5959
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