{"id":10044,"date":"2015-06-08T15:45:20","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T22:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=10044"},"modified":"2015-06-08T15:45:20","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T22:45:20","slug":"crescent-swallows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/08\/crescent-swallows\/","title":{"rendered":"Crescent Swallows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cliff<\/a><\/p>\n

Beautiful birds, such as these\u00a0most indisputably are, deserve beautiful names, and it’s hard to imagine a label\u00a0lovelier than\u00a0Hirundo lunifrons<\/em>, the crescent-fronted swallow.<\/p>\n

Alas, we’re stuck nowadays with the prosaic\u00a0cliff swallow<\/strong> and the hardly more evocative\u00a0Petrochelidon pyrrhonota\u00a0<\/em>(“red-rumped rock swallow”). But it took us a good long time to get there.<\/p>\n

It isn’t at all clear when this abundant and widespread\u00a0swallow was first “discovered” by European science. According to Elliott Coues<\/a>, this is the bird Forster published in 1772<\/a> as “Swallow No. 35,”<\/p>\n

which answers in some particulars to the description of the Martin, Hirundo Urbica, Linn. but seems to be smaller and has no\u00a0white on the rump.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Forster does report that these swallows nest under eaves and on riverside cliffs, but there is little else here to indicate that he is writing of the bird we know as the cliff swallow; you’d think he might have mentioned some of the salient plumage features of this well-marked species. As it is, I suspect, contra<\/em> Coues, that the skin Forster\u00a0received was that of a tree swallow. In any event, Forster goes on to note — tongue perhaps ever so slightly in cheek —\u00a0that<\/p>\n

the Indians say, they were never found torpid under water, probably because they have no large nets to fish with under the ice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More than half a century\u00a0later, in 1823, Thomas Say, working with specimens from near Canyon City, Colorado<\/a>, gave the cliff swallow\u00a0a detailed formal description<\/a> and the\u00a0Linnaean name\u00a0Hirundo lunifrons,\u00a0<\/em>commemorating the bird’s “large white frontal lunule.”<\/p>\n

That species name,\u00a0lunifrons<\/em>, “crescent-fronted,” made its way into the AOU\u00a0Check-list\u00a0<\/em>in 1886, and persisted in that authoritative work for decades. In 1912, though, Samuel Rhoads<\/a>\u00a0obtained copies of two items published in the\u00a0<\/a>Kentucky Gazette<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Samuel Rafinesque<\/a>, one of them<\/a> dated — fatally — February 14, 1822, a year earlier than the publication of\u00a0Say’s account. Rafinesque reports that<\/p>\n

There are two species of Swallows in Kentucky…. The second species I shall now describe and call it the Blue Bank-Swallow. I have given it the scientific name of Hirundo albifrons which means the Swallow with a white forehead. It is very remarkable by its unforked tail…. Its face or the space surrounding the bill is black, the forehead white, the top of the head blue; the cheeks, throat and upper part of the rump of a reddish chestnut colour, or rufous…. This bird is to be seen preserved with its nest in the Museum of Cincinnati.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rhoads, obviously in fine fettle, comments<\/a>:<\/p>\n

it seems a bit humiliating for [the scientific\u00a0name of the species] to be snatched from the laurel crown of Thomas Say and transferred, by the rights of priority, to a man whom he undoubtedly despised and certainly ignored. Say was one of the coterie of Philadelphia naturalists that eventually drove Rafinesque and his literary contributions from any recognition by the Academy of Natural Sciences…. That eccentric naturalist [Rafinesque] had stolen the march on all his contemporaries by a little squib in the Kentucky Gazette.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Five years after Rhoads’s discovery, the proposal was made to change the scientific name<\/a> of the swallow to\u00a0Petrochelidon albifrons albifrons<\/em>, “since Rafinesque’s name is clearly identifiable as\u00a0Hirundo (= Petrochelidon) lunifrons\u00a0<\/em>Say and is of earlier date.”<\/p>\n

\"AOU<\/a><\/p>\n

The proposal was accepted, and the 1931 edition of the\u00a0Check-list\u00a0<\/em>was the first to use the new old name.<\/p>\n

And the last.<\/p>\n

Beginning as early as the 1840s, beginning, it seems, with George Edward Gray’s Genera of Birds<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0European ornithology had begun to use yet another name<\/a>, Petrichelidon pyrrhonota<\/a>. <\/em>When in 1894 that name was preferred<\/a>\u00a0in Richard Bowdler Sharpe and Clyde E. Wyatt’s\u00a0Monograph of the Hirundinidae<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0it was time — one might think — for the Americans to react.<\/p>\n

\"Sharpe<\/a><\/p>\n

Not so fast.<\/p>\n

In 1902, the AOU committee dismissed the name<\/a>\u00a0pyrrhonota<\/em>,\u00a0finding no “evidence to show that the change is necessary.” Not until 1944<\/a>, fully fifty years after the name had been ratified by Sharpe and Wyatt, did the AOU finally accept\u00a0pyrrhonota\u00a0<\/em>as both\u00a0applying to this species and enjoying priority over\u00a0lunifrons\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0albifrons\u00a0<\/em>alike.<\/p>\n

What changed their mind was Charles Hellmayr’s\u00a0footnote in the eighth volume of his\u00a0Catalogue of Birds of the Americas<\/a><\/em>. It was Louis Pierre Vieillot who coined the name\u00a0pyrrhonota\u00a0<\/em>in 1817<\/a>, taking his description from the Sonnini translation of Azara’s\u00a0Apuntamientos<\/em><\/a>. Hellmayr explains<\/a> that<\/p>\n

with the exception of the blackish lower belly [“le bas-ventre noir”] which may easily be construed as referring to the dusky under tail coverts, Azara’s description, upon which Vieillot’s name was based, is quite accurate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite why it took so long to reach this conclusion is a mystery. Had no American ornithologist\u00a0looked seriously at Azara and Vieillot? That seems hardly likely: we know, for example, that Robert Ridgway knew the 1817 description<\/a>, and nevertheless accounted it “doubtful.” We can assume, too, that the AOU committees from 1886 to 1944 were conscientious bibliographers.<\/p>\n

However it happened, I’m sorry in a way that we’re stuck — apparently for good this time — with the boring\u00a0pyrrhonota<\/em>. Say’s name\u00a0lunifrons<\/em>\u00a0is evocative, romantic, beautiful.<\/p>\n

Almost as much so as the bird itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beautiful birds, such as these\u00a0most indisputably are, deserve beautiful names, and it’s hard to imagine a label\u00a0lovelier than\u00a0Hirundo lunifrons, the crescent-fronted swallow. Alas, we’re stuck nowadays with the prosaic\u00a0cliff swallow and the hardly more evocative\u00a0Petrochelidon pyrrhonota\u00a0(“red-rumped rock swallow”). But it took us a good long time to get there. It isn’t at all clear when … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Crescent Swallows”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[501,233,87,88,373,228,500,221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10044"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10045,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10044\/revisions\/10045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}