UKARUMPA, PNG — Swiftlets darted around me as I walked to and from an interview. Sometimes they were only feet away, banking and swooping on narrow wings. Their bellies were pale gray, and they were unmarked above.

I’m desperate to identify them. I meant to go to bed an hour ago, hoping to get over a sore throat, but I’ve been scouring the internet instead. They surely have a name, and I want to know what it is.

Maybe it’s a character flaw. I tell myself I should be content to delight in what they are, that I should remain uncorrupted by the desire to confine them to a list. But I think there is something far deeper at stake — a primal urge to name. We need words.

But I don’t have them this time.

I mentioned before that “Birds of New Guinea” lists four drab swiftlets: Uniform, Mountain, Whitehead’s, and Three-toed. Some authorities place them in the genus Collocalia, but evidently the newer trend (not universally accepted) is to call them Aerodramus. This is the group of birds that includes Asia’s famous Edible-nest Swiftlet.

Three-toed Swiftlet is now called the Papuan Swiftlet. Whitehead’s Swiftlet has apparently been split into several species, and the one that kept the name “Whitehead’s” is endemic to the Philippines. The split resulted in two PNG species, Mayr’s Swiftlet (Bismarck Archipelago and Solomon Islands, virtually unknown) and Bare-legged Swiftlet. Bare-legged Swiftlet is supposedly endemic to mainland New Guinea, but I can find virtually nothing about it online, except for its name repeated over and over in checklists. No descriptions. No helpful information. No trip reports. No discussions of taxonomy.

So after all that, I’m left with four swiftlets on the island: Uniform, Mountain, Bare-legged, and Papuan. By all (i.e., three or four) accounts, Uniform and Mountain are the only species anyone ever actually sees. But why? How do they know it’s not one of the other species? Uniform and Mountain are distinguished primarily by elevation, apparently. Where does one stop and the other pick up? Do they overlap? Is that really the only way to tell?

My swiftlets need a name.

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