Swallow-wing

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Swallow-wing

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Piciformes
Family:	Bucconidae
Genus:	Chelidoptera
Species:	C. tenebrosa

Binomial name

Chelidoptera tenebrosa
(Pallas, 1782)

The Swallow-wing (Chelidoptera tenebrosa) is a species of bird in the Bucconidae family, the puffbirds. It is also called the Swallow-winged Puffbird. It is monotypic, the only species within the genus Chelidoptera. It is found in Brazil and the entire Amazon Basin; also Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, the Guianas, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, Peru, and Venezuela. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, subtropical or tropical swamps, and heavily degraded former forest.

[edit] Distribution and habitat

The Swallow-winged Puffbird's range is throughout the Amazon Basin to the foothills of the Andes in the west, in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. To the east-southeast, the range encompasses the Amazon's adjacent Tocantins-Araguaia River drainage as well as about 900 km eastward. Southeastwards from the Amazon Basin across the Caatinga, a disjunct population occurs on the southeast coast of Brazil, in a 300-800 km wide coastal strip that extends about 3000 km.

On the north Caribbean coast of South America, in the west nearly all of Venezuela is in the bird's range. The coastal range is continuous eastwards through the Atlantic coastal Guianas, and ends east of the Tocantins-Araguaia drainage in the Brazilian states of Maranhão and Piauí.