White-banded Swallow

The white-banded swallow (Atticora fasciata) is a species of bird in the family Hirundinidae. It is black with white thighs, a white breast, and has white bars on the edges of its wings. It has a distinct, deeply forked tail. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela, in tropical lowlands. It is non-migratory. Its natural habitats are rivers and forested areas. It nests in burrows and does not use artificial cavities. The white-banded swallow is evaluated as of least-concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). == Taxonomy == The white-banded swallow 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 the swallows in the genus Hirundo and coined the binomial name Hirundo fasciata. Gmelin based his entry on "L'hirondelle à ceinture blanche" from Cayenne in French Guiana that had been described in 1779 by the French polymath, the Comte de Buffon. The bird was illustrated with an engraving by François-Nicolas Martinet. The white-banded swallow is now one of three species placed in the genus Atticora that was introduced in 1842 by…