The mosque swallow (Cecropis senegalensis) is a large species of swallow. It is a resident breeder in much of sub-Saharan Africa, although most common in the west. It does not migrate but follows the rains to some extent.
Taxonomy
In 1760, the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the mosque swallow in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Senegal. He used the French name L'hirondelle du Sénégal and the Latin Hirundo Senegalensis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. In 1766, when Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.
Formerly placed in the genus Hirundo the mosque swallow and its relatives have been shown by molecular studies to be a separate clade and are now placed in the genus Cecropis, which was introduced by the German zoologist Friedrich Boie in 1826.
There are three recognised subspecies:
Distribution and habitat
The mosque swallow is found from southern Mauritania and Senegal east to western South Sudan then south to Namibia, northern Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and north-eastern South Africa.
In southern Africa the mosque swallow is a woodland bird, preferring dense broad-leaved woodland with mopane (Colosphermum mopane) but also miombo (Brachystegia spp), with scattered baobabs (Adansonia digitata) and leadwoods (Combretum imberbe). In West Africa it prefers open habitats such as forest clearings and savanna, and also around villages and towns.