Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Juvenile
Juvenile
This swallow’s most distinguishing
characteristic is its “rough” primary feather, from
which its common name has been derived. In adults the stiffened
barbs of
the leading web of the outer primary feather lack terminal barbules. In males
the barbs
are recurved into minute hooklets, and in the female they are prolonged into a
efinite, naked point that is little or not at all recurved. In males this
produces
“a file-like roughness when the finger is drawn along the edge of the quill from
base
toward tip” (Ridgway 1904). Early taxonomists were so taken with this
characteristic that
they referred to it in both the genus and species portions of this bird’s
scientific name.
The Greek appellation for the genus, Stelgidopteryx, is a combination of two
words
meaning “scraper wing,” and the species name of serripennis, assigned by
Audubon, is a
combination of two Latin words meaning “saw feather.” The possible adaptive
significance
of this feature remains a mystery.
Copied from: De Jong, Michael J. 1996. Northern Rough-winged Swallow (Stelgidopteryx
serripennis),
The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of
Ornithology;
Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online:
http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/234doi:10.2173/bna.234