Great Swallow-tailed Swift calls

Yesterday I recorded Great Swallow-tailed Swifts vocalizing near El Obraje, in the Honduran department of El Paraiso. I just uploaded these calls to Xeno Canto, and as far as I've been able to ascertain, these are the first public recordings of this species.

I went to El Paraiso yesterday morning with Roselvy Juárez, Oliver Komar and Ruth Bennett to bird another data-deficient eBird quadrant. It was a pleasant and productive morning of birding, as we found 92 species for the quadrant, including Little Tinamou, White-tailed Hawk, Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Fork-tailed Flycatcher, Lesser Greenlet, Rufous-and-white Wren, Tropical Parula, and Giant Cowbird. 

Chantler and Driessens, in their 1995 book "Swifts: a Guide to the Swifts and Treeswifts of the World" cite Edwards' 1989 book "A Field Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Adjacent Areas", which describes the call of the Great Swallow-tailed Swift as "a plaintive tyee-ew". Yesterday, one of the individuals in a flock of five gave that call, illustrated in the following recording:

Howell & Webb (1995) give another description of a Great Swallow-tailed Swift vocalization, noting a "reedy, screechy chipping, including a distinctive, accelerating series, ending emphatically, may recall Pileated Flycatcher song: kree kri-kri-kri-kri kree-kreeh!" One of the birds yesterday also gave that call, illustrated in the following recording:

I recorded these calls from a single-species flock of five individuals, at an elevation of 1000 m, as they flew over us. The habitat there was montane semi-humid forest, with some shade coffee plantations, and steep rocky canyons.

Until now, neither Xeno Canto nor the Macaulay Library had any recordings of this species, which appears to be fairly common in the highlands of Honduras.

Cited literature:

Chantler, P. & G. Driessens. 1995. Swifts: a Guide to the Swifts and Treeswifts of the World. Pica Press, Sussex.

Edwards, E. P. 1989. A Field Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Adjacent Areas: Belize, Guatemala, and El Salvador, Third Edition. Corrie Herring Hooks Series.

Howell, S. N. G. & S. Webb. 1995. A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America. Oxford University Press, Oxford.