Northern Rough-winged Swallow

About the Northern Rough-winged Swallow

The Northern Rough-winged Swallow is the plainest swallow in North America, and comfortable with it - warm brown above, dingy white below with a dusky throat, no forked tail, no glossy colors. The name comes from tiny serrations on the outer wing feather, a feature you will never see in the field and whose purpose remains an honest scientific mystery.

It flies with a distinctive style once learned: slower, floppier wingbeats than other swallows, often low over water, picking off flying insects in long unhurried beats rather than the darting frenzy of its cousins. The call is a low, burry "brrt", frequently doubled.

Rough-wings are burrow nesters that rarely dig their own - they move into old kingfisher and Bank Swallow burrows, drainpipes, weep holes in bridges and retaining walls, and crevices in cut banks. Unlike Bank Swallows they nest as scattered single pairs rather than colonies, one reason they are seen in ones and twos rather than swarms.

In Texas they breed statewide where banks, bridges, and culverts offer holes, are abundant in migration along every river and lake, and a few linger along the coast and Rio Grande in winter. On a spring reservoir the mixed swallow flocks reward sorting: the plain brown bird with the lazy wingbeats is this one.