Posted by andy bolger on June 12, 2003 at -1:06:46 from 81.135.115.150 user beardbiter.
In Reply to: Re: Hirundo, was Robert's boat posted by Jonathan Labaree on June 11, 2003 at 19:58:16:
Thanks for the answers guys. My reasoning had been much the same and I am sure I'd heard somebody talk of the return of the "hirondelles" or some such but my bird book gave house martin as "delichon urbica" ( town martin?) and the sand martin as "riparia riparia" ( bank dweller?) only the crag martin appears as a "hirundo", so I thought I must be mistaken. Does the first name always indicate the genus and the second, species? Or can the first name depict species and the second, sub-species?
The biology doesn't matter too much to me in this instance, its more of a case of wanting one word to cover "birds that catch insects on the wing" the hirondelles are such a deight to watch, hard to imagine summer without them.