There have been a few reports of red-rumped swallows this year from NE Q
and NW WA. As far as I'm aware there, remains only one acceptably
documented record for Australia, the first one from Mossman in about 1983.
There's been lots of other records and I'm not suggesting that they are
wrong by any means. In fact, they appear to be annual around Mossman. The
problem is that telling red-rumped and Striated swallows apart is extremely
difficult. According to (my mermory of) the rarities committee case summary
for the accepted record, the submission contained detailed descriptions and
research into how to separate the two species, which included pinning down
the probable subspecies of red-rumped involved. Obviously this went way
beyond the readily available birding literature which is of little help.
Unfortunately, the Committees files are confidential, making the results of
this research unavailable. Maybe other records pertain to striated swallow?
It's an unfortunate hindrance that a lot of the information needed actually
exists but is unavailable for use.
David James
PO BOX 5225
Townsville Mail Centre,
Qld 4810, Australia
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