''Tachycineta'' is a

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

of birds in the swallow family

Hirundinidae The swallows, martins, and saw-wings, or Hirundinidae are a family of passerine songbirds found around the world on all continents, including occasionally in Antarctica. Highly adapted to aerial feeding, they have a distinctive appearance. The t ...

. There are nine described species all restricted to the

Americas The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.''Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sing ...

. These are slender swallows with forked tails. Most species have a metallic green back, green or blue head, and metallic blue or unglossed brown wings. All have pure white underparts, and four species have a white rump. Most ''Tachycineta'' swallows are at least partially migratory, with only golden and

mangrove swallow The mangrove swallow (''Tachycineta albilinea'') is a passerine bird in the swallow family that breeds in coastal regions from Mexico through Central America to Panama. It has blue-green upperparts, blackish flight feathers, a white rump, a blac ...

being essentially resident. All the species use natural or disused cavities for nest sites.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Tachycineta'' was introduced by the German ornithologists

Jean Cabanis Jean Louis Cabanis (8 March 1816 – 20 February 1906) was a German ornithologist. He worked at the bird collections of the Natural History Museum in Berlin becoming its first curator of birds in 1850. He founded the ''Journal für Ornithologie ...

in 1850 with the

violet-green swallow The violet-green swallow (''Tachycineta thalassina'') is a small North American passerine bird in the Hirundinidae, swallow family. These aerial insectivores are distributed along the west coast from Alaska to Mexico, extending as far east as Mon ...

(''Tachycineta thalassina'') as the

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

. The genus name is from

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

''takhukinētos'' meaning "moving quickly". The genus contains nine species, divided into two sub-clades that are associated with geography: a North American/Caribbean clade and a South/Central American clade.

References

Hirundinidae {{Hirundinidae-stub