Black Swift

About the Black Swift

The American black swift, or more simply black swift (Cypseloides niger), is a species of bird that is found from northern British Columbia in Canada through the United States and Mexico to Costa Rica and Brazil. They are also found in the Caribbean.

The American black swift was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other swallows and swifts in the genus Hirundo and coined the binomial name Hirundo nigra. Gmelin based his description on that of French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson who, in 1760, had described and illustrated "Le Martinet de Saint Dominigue" from a preserved specimen. The type locality is Hispaniola: Saint-Domingue was a French colony on the Caribbean island. The American black swift is now placed with seven other swifts in the genus Cypseloides and was introduced in 1848 by the German naturist August Vollrath Streubel. The genus name combines the genus Cypselus introduced by Johann Illiger in 1811 and the Ancient Greek -oidēs meaning "resembling". The specific epithet niger is the Latin word for "black".

Three subspecies... Wikipedia →