This martin occurs in Madagascar. An older field report records birds drinking at a pool and one bird flushed from a nest tunnel in a roadside bank.
An 1885 catalogue described a female as dark sooty brown above, with an ashy-brown underside and paler throat and center of the belly.
A Madagascar field report using the former name Riparia paludicola cowani noted birds drinking at a camp pool and one bird flushed from a nest tunnel in a roadside bank.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.