A blue-black back, rusty throat and long forked tail help identify it. It catches insects in flight and builds mud-and-grass nests on structures such as bridges or buildings.
The upperparts are metallic blue-black, with rusty red on the forehead, throat and upper breast; the long forked tail has white spots. Females have slightly shorter outer tail feathers, and young birds have paler throat markings.
It catches a wide variety of insects on the wing. Both sexes build an open mud-and-grass cup nest on structures such as buildings, bridges or vertical rock walls.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.