Delichon urbicum
The western house martin, sometimes called the common house martin, northern house martin or, particularly in Europe, just house martin, is a migratory passerine bird of the swallow family which breeds in Europe, north Africa and west-central Asia; and winters in sub-Saharan Africa and southwestern Asia. It feeds on insects which are caught in flight, and it migrates to climates where flying insects are plentiful. It has a blue head and upperparts, white rump and pure white underparts, and is found in both open country and near human habitation. It is similar in appearance to the two other martin species of the genus Delichon, which are both endemic to eastern and southern Asia. It has two accepted subspecies.
Andreas Trepte · CC BY-SA 2.5 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- common house-martinPBDB
- Sits inside
- DelichonPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Hirundinidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Hirundinidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Hirundinidae
Time the record covers
At least 645 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 1.8 Mya to 11.7 ka.
4 occurrences of Delichon urbicum on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
4 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Delichon urbicum and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Delichon urbicum and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
152 taxa- Passeriformes3 sites
- Anas crecca2 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos2 sites
- Anatidae2 sites
- Athene noctua2 sites
- Aythya fuligula2 sites
- Chloris chloris2 sites
- Columba livia2 sites
- Corvidae2 sites
- Coturnix coturnix2 sites
- Eremophila alpestris2 sites
- Falco2 sites
- Galliformes2 sites
- Gallinago gallinago2 sites
- Hirundo rustica2 sites
- Lagopus2 sites
- Lyrurus tetrix2 sites
- Pyrrhocorax2 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus2 sites
- Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax2 sites
- Riparia riparia2 sites
- Turdus2 sites
- Accipiter gentilis1 site
- Accipitridae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Delichon urbicum, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
4 references- The end of the Pleistocene in south-western Europe: The avian assemblages from Heinrich event 3 to the Last Glacial Maximum in the Prades mountains (north-eastern Iberian Peninsula)1
- Late Pleistocene fossil birds from Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (North-Eastern Italy): implications for palaeoecology, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate1
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia1
- Une faune tres diversifee du Pleistocene inferieur de la Sierra de Quibas (province de Murcia, Espagne)1
Each of the 4 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Delichon urbicum
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Andreas Trepte
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Delichon urbicum was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itDelichon through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)