Are these Welcome Swallows, Tree Martins or a mix of some of each? There seem to be 2 different kinds here.
Des
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Seems to be a mixed flock of Tree Martins & Welcome Swallows as you've observed, Des.
How do you distinguish between these 2 species, and the Fairy Martin, Woko?
I know the Welcome Swallow has a deeper V tail than the Martins, but beyond that?
Cheers
Tim
Brisbane
Thanks for clearing that up Woko. Is it common for the two species to intermingle like that?
Des
the Fairy Martin has a cinnamon-rufous head, poor pic attached
Peter
Yes, as pacman says, the Fairy Martin has a cinnamon-rufous head while the Tree Martin & the Welcome Swallow have very dark blue heads. If you see a lighter coloured head then you can be confident that it's a Fairy Martin. The trick is to tell the Fairy & Tree Martins apart when they're flying. Some years ago I thought I detected a slight difference in flight pattern between Fairy & Tree Martins. One was slighlly more jerky (I think that was the Fairy Martin) than the other. But it might have been my imagination. Perhaps other posters have observed something similar?
Timmo,
Welcome Swallows have a dark rump same as their back, whereas both Tree & Fairy Martin have a white rump.
The white rump on the Fairy Martin is a much whiter white compared to the dirty white on the rump of the Tree Martin.
Fairy Martins are slightly smaller than Tree Martins, but this feature is not much use unless the 2 species are sitting side by side for comparison, but then it's usually easier to tell them apart by the head colour differences.
Remember this... Tree Martins rarely fly close to the ground (they stick to canopy and above trees); Fairy Martins and Welcome Swallows are often close to ground. I'd be a surpirised to see Tree Martins sitting on a barbed wire fence as in the pic. Lorne