The lesser swallow-tailed swift or Cayenne swift (''Panyptila cayennensis'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

in subfamily Apodinae of the swift family

Apodidae The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows, but are not closely related to any passerine species. Swifts are placed in the order Apodiformes with hummingbirds. The treeswifts are closely ...

. It is found from southern

Mexico Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guate ...

through

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

; in every mainland

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the souther ...

country except Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay; and on

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

.HBW and BirdLife International (2021) Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world. Version 6. Available at: http://datazone.birdlife.org/userfiles/file/Species/Taxonomy/HBW-BirdLife_Checklist_v6_Dec21.zip retrieved August 7, 2022Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 24 July 2022. Species Lists of Birds for South American Countries and Territories. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCCountryLists.htm retrieved July 24, 2022

Taxonomy and systematics

The lesser swallow-tailed swift was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, ...

's ''

Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nom ...

''. He placed it with all the swallows and swifts in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

Hirundo The bird genus ''Hirundo'' is a group of passerines in the family Hirundinidae (swallows and martins). The genus name is Latin for a swallow. These are the typical swallows, including the widespread barn swallow. Many of this group have blue back ...

'' and coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Hirundo cayennensis''. Gmelin based his description on the "Martinet à collier blanc" that had been described in 1779 by the French polymath

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste. His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent F ...

from a specimen collected in

Cayenne Cayenne (; ; gcr, Kayenn) is the capital city of French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France located in South America. The city stands on a former island at the mouth of the Cayenne River on the Atlantic coast. The city's m ...

, French Guiana. A hand-colored illustration of the bird was also published. The lesser swallow-tailed swift is now placed with the great swallow-tailed swift in the genus ''

Panyptila ''Panyptila'' is a genus of swifts in the family Apodidae. The two species are found in Central and South America. Taxonomy The genus ''Panyptila'' was introduced in 1847 by the German ornithologist Jean Cabanis with the lesser swallow-tailed s ...

'' that was introduced in 1847 by the German ornithologist

Jean Cabanis Jean Louis Cabanis (8 March 1816 – 20 February 1906) was a German ornithologist. Cabanis was born in Berlin to an old Huguenot family who had moved from France. Little is known of his early life. He studied at the University of Berlin from 183 ...

. The genus name combines the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

''panu'' meaning "very" or "exceedingly" with ''ptilon'' meaning "wing". The specific epithet ''cayennensis'' is from Cayenne, the

type locality Type locality may refer to: * Type locality (biology) * Type locality (geology) See also * Local (disambiguation) * Locality (disambiguation) {{disambiguation ...

. According to the

International Ornithological Committee The International Ornithologists' Union, formerly known as the International Ornithological Committee, is a group of about 200 international ornithologists, and is responsible for the International Ornithological Congress and other international ...

(IOC) the species is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

: no subspecies are recognized. However, the

Clements taxonomy ''The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World'' is a book by Jim Clements which presents a list of the bird species of the world. The most recent printed version is the sixth edition (2007), but has been updated yearly, the last version in 202 ...

and

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

's ''

Handbook of the Birds of the World The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. ...

'' assign two subspecies, the

nominate Nomination is part of the process of selecting a candidate for either election to a public office, or the bestowing of an honor or award. A collection of nominees narrowed from the full list of candidates is a short list. Political office In th ...

''P. c. cayennensis'' and ''P. c. veraecrucis''.Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2021. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2021. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/ Retrieved August 25, 2021 This article follows the IOC model.

Description

The lesser swallow-tailed swift is a slender species, long, and weighing about . It has long narrow wings and a long forked tail, which is usually held tightly closed. It is mainly black with a white throat and upper breast and squarish white patches on the rear flanks. The sexes are similar.

Distribution and habitat

The lesser swallow-tailed swift is found from eastern Mexico's

Veracruz Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...

state south through every country of Central America into Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. It is also found throughout the entire

Amazon Basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Boli ...

, in a narrow strip along Brazil's southeastern coast, and on Trinidad. It inhabits the edges and clearing of lowland tropical

evergreen forest An evergreen forest is a forest made up of evergreen trees. They occur across a wide range of climatic zones, and include trees such as conifers and holly in cold climates, eucalyptus, Live oak, acacias, magnolia, and banksia in more temperat ...

and

secondary forest A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. ...

, cultivated areas, river corridors, and human-populated areas. In elevation it reaches in Guatemala and Ecuador though it typically is found lower.Chantler, P., A. Bonan, E. de Juana, and P. F. D. Boesman (2020). Lesser Swallow-tailed Swift (''Panyptila cayennensis''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.lstswi1.01 retrieved October 8, 2022

Behavior

Movement and flight

The lesser swallow-tailed swift is a year-round resident throughout its range. Its flight is very fast and fluttery and often very high in the air.

Feeding

Like all swifts, the lesser swallow-tailed swift is an aerial insectivore. Though its diet has not been detailed, in a study in Venezuela it fed mainly on Diptera with smaller numbers of

Homoptera Homoptera is a suborder of order Hemiptera that is considered by some taxonomists to be paraphyletic, and therefore deprecated (obsolete). It was therefore split into the suborders Sternorrhyncha, Auchenorrhyncha, and Coleorrhyncha. The earlier w ...

and Hymenoptera and very small numbers from other orders. It is less gregarious than other swifts and is usually seen as individuals or pairs. If other swift species are present it will normally feed above them, although it stays below ''Cypseloides'' species such as chestnut-collared swift.

Breeding

The lesser swallow-tailed swift's breeding season varies geographically, with nesting generally in the local spring and summer. The nest is tubular, wider at the top, and with the entrance at its base. It is made of plant material felted with saliva and attached to a branch or a vertical surface. In the latter case, the entire length is fixed to the wall or trunk. Nests have been found under bridges, on the walls of occupied buildings and inside abandoned ones, and on large trees. Two or three white eggs are laid on a shelf in the upper part of the nest and incubated by both parents.

Vocalization

The lesser swallow-tailed swift's usual calls are "a reedy or wheezy phrase of fast twittering notes...'pzeee-pzi-titititititi-ti-ti-pzeee!'" and "a repeated drawn-out single 'pzeeeh'". It often flies so high that the calls cannot be heard.

Status

The IUCN has assessed the lesser swallow-tailed swift as being of Least Concern. It has an extremely large range and an estimated population of at least 500,000 mature individuals. The population is believed to be slowly decreasing and no immediate threats have been identified. In various parts of its range it is considered uncommon to locally fairly common, and is " ually encountered in small numbers only".

References

External links

Lesser swallow-tailed swift photo
VIREO {{Taxonbar, from=Q1262293 lesser swallow-tailed swift Birds of Mexico Birds of Central America Birds of Colombia Birds of Venezuela Birds of Ecuador Birds of the Guianas Birds of the Amazon Basin Birds of Trinidad and Tobago Birds of the Atlantic Forest lesser swallow-tailed swift lesser swallow-tailed swift