Glossy Swiftlet?

I visited Kinabalu Park late last September. There, I saw several tens of swiftlets which were making their nests on the wall of the Park's Head Quarter Building. As some bird book describes that they are Glossy Swiftlets, I have identified they are that ones. However, I am not confident personally. Because swifts and swiftlets in Malaysia awfully resemble each other. My poor knowledge and short experience can not tell anything about them. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Hideo Sunami wrote:I visited Kinabalu Park late last September. There, I saw several tens of swiftlets which were making their nests on the wall of the Park's Head Quarter Building. As some bird book describes that they are Glossy Swiftlets, I have identified they are that ones. However, I am not confident personally. Because swifts and swiftlets in Malaysia awfully resemble each other. My poor knowledge and short experience can not tell anything about them. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

These are definitely from the Glossy Swiftlets group, either the Glossy Swiftlet or the now endemic Bornean Swiftlet (split from Cave Swiftlet that was earlier split from Glossy Swiftlet). There are only recent nesting of the Bornean Swiftlets found to be above 2300m being a pretty rare species in Kinabalu Park and recently at the borders of Sabah-Sarawak, it could only be confidently told apart from Glossy Swiftlet by studying the tufts on the legs, so its still not really possible to identify it in the field. However, so far those that are nesting at Kinabalu HQ is still yet to contain any Bornean Swiftlets.

But yours are interesting, I am not sure if it is due to the flash that you used as the Bornean Swiftlet is said to have a greener gloss while Glossy Swiftlet a bluish gloss, looks bit green in yours but could be merely because of the flash.

Its breeding may still be in dispute, I only found James Eaton to post a nesting of the swiftlet at Kinabalu to be of Bornean Swiftlet, maybe they were underlooked, so again guess yours are still stuck in Glossy/Bornean Swiftlet status. Of coz, if you did record the rough altitude or location you get the shot, we would still have a good chance to guess?

Thank you very much for your prompt and adequate comments. As you pointed out Bornean Swiftlet is very a\rare, I think it is very provable that this is Glossy Swiftlet.

While, I did not use an electric flash light at all. I think you can not recognize shadows made by the flash. Another photo is attached here.

The altitude of location of the Head Quarter is about 1500m, I remember. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Hideo Sunami wrote:Thank you very much for your prompt and adequate comments. As you pointed out Bornean Swiftlet is very a\rare, I think it is very provable that this is Glossy Swiftlet.

While, I did not use an electric flash light at all. I think you can not recognize shadows made by the flash. Another photo is attached here.

The altitude of location of the Head Quarter is about 1500m, I remember. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Often very rare means they are rarely recorded, this is probably because you can only ID it on hand, hence there are almost technically no sightings from the field that can be certain. If you can get an extremely close-up of the feet, the Bornean should had a lack of feather tufts on the hind toe. Anyway, Bornean could be more regular than expected, Philips (2009) regard it to also occur at the KNP HQ but only the Glossy is so far known to nest there.

I saw this when visit KK this year in Fairly Garden, the make lot of nest too...