At 09:48 12/01/00 +1000, David James wrote:
>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.
In the case of the Kununurra birds in December, a
specimen was taken and sent to the Museum of Western
Australia and positive identification was confirmed.
I agree that Striated & Red-rumped Swallows are difficult
to distinguish. I didn't mention the specimen in my
first posting, as the collecting of museum specimens
can be controversial sometimes.
____________________________________________________________
Frank O'Connor
8C Hardy Road
Nedlands WA 6009
Phone : +61 8 9386 5694
ICQ : 14655047
Email :
Birding WA http://www.iinet.net.au/~foconnor
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