House martin

Scientifically the bird is known as Delichon Urbicum, but in common calling, it is also known as Common house martin or northern house martin. The bird is a type of passerine bird and belongs to the migratory category. It belongs to the swallow family and most commonly breeds around North Africa, Asia and Europe. During cold winters, they tend to migrate down towards the tropical regions. The adult can be up to 13 centimetres in length and has a wing span of 26 to 29 cms. The weight of an average bird is around 18 grams. Both of the sexes of this bird are similar in appearance and it is the young ones which differ in appearance. The juvenile would have a blacking tone to it and white tipping can also be seen on its edges of the wings. The bird flies fast and the wing beating can be at a speed of around 5.3 beats per second which is quite fast, especially when compared to the 4.4 beats of a barn swallow. The bird is quite noisy and gets even noisier in its group of species. The calling is hard in sound whereas the alarming sound is a little shriller in nature. The birds tend to make pairs between them, and they live and breed together for life then. Though the outside of the pair copulations are made too, this makes these birds polygamous.
The main food of these birds is the flying insects which it keeps catching during the flight and the areas with more numbers of such insects, becomes one of its favourite places to live. The bird has a blue head and some under parts are also of the same colour, whereas the rump and the remaining under parts are of pure white colour. These birds can easily live around open country areas and adapt well around human living areas.
The bird was given this name because of the way it lives closer to human areas and gets settled there. They can easily form small closed cup shaped nests with the mud under the safe places like corners, under eaves around house, making them comfortable.
The birds are distributed in large numbers across Eurasia to Mongolia and then up to morocco, Tunisia and northern Algeria. They also move to southern china and Southeast Asia during winter season. The bird prefers to live in the open country region with lesser amount of vegetation around and some examples of its favourite areas can be meadows, farmland and other wetlands around the water beds. The birds can also be found in mountain ranges up to a height of 2200 meters. The bird has urban living and adapts well in the modern cities in the areas with cleaner air. They are normally found on the trees where other species of swallows may be living sharing the roosting site with them, and also their food source at the tree. The house martin also has a tendency of flying around on higher altitudes and can be quite nomadic. Especially in areas like Thailand and east Africa, it is found on high areas only.