These are photos of barn swallows migrating through Seoul, Korea Ive found about 80 birds flyover at that moment, there are known two races which are controversial, H. r. tytleri and H, r.gutturalis among the birds flying over and aroung my head, at the Han River's riverside park, I've soon noticed that there were some color differences between them. For long time, I was was trying to get photos of the "red bellied" barn swallows, and it was quite successful that day.
There were about 2-3 rufous bellies birds, and 1-2 buff -cream colored ones in the flock.
did you find one on the above photo?
I've also found curious thing that most of them were looked like males, at least for me. with prolonged outer tail feather's streamers.
Check the wikipedia
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- H. r. gutturalis, described by Giovanni Antonio Scopoli in 1786,[13] has whitish underparts and a broken breast band. Breast chestnut and lower underparts more pink-buff.[20] The populations that breed in the central and eastern Himalayas have been included in this subspecies,[21] although the primary breeding range is Japan and Korea. The east Asian breeders winter across tropical Asia from India and Sri Lanka[22] east to Indonesia and New Guinea. Increasing numbers are wintering in Australia. It hybridises with H. r. tytleri in the Amur River area. It is thought that the two eastern Asia forms were once geographically separate, but the nest sites provided by expanding human habitation allowed the ranges to overlap.[2] H. r. gutturalis is a vagrant to Alaska and Washington,[23] but is easily distinguished from the North American breeding subspecies, H. r. erythrogaster, by the latter's reddish underparts.[2]
- H. r. tytleri, first described by Thomas Jerdon in 1864, and named for British soldier, naturalist and photographer Robert Christopher Tytler,[13] has deep orange-red underparts and an incomplete breast band. The tail is also longer.[20] It breeds in central Siberia south to northern Mongolia and winters from eastern Bengal east to Thailand and Malaysia.[2]
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On the photo below, I've caught another rufous bellied barn swallow in flight, fortunately, not in focus but still can recognize the underwing covers are also rufous.