Alpine Swift

• GeneralIt can stay airborne for more than 6 months at a stretch without landing.
• It holds the record for continuous flight of any bird: geolocators fitted to Swiss birds showed that they spend more than two hundred days in a row on the wing during the African winter, without landing once.
• It eats, drinks, mates and sleeps on the wing: at dusk it climbs to more than two thousand metres and glides half-asleep, resting the two brain hemispheres in turn.
• Its urban colonies on historic Spanish buildings are well known, and façade renovations that seal up the holes are now one of its main threats.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat and environment

Mountain rock faces, sea cliffs and tall buildings of the Mediterranean basin and Asia

Sexual maturity

2 years

Gestation / incubation

20 days of incubation

Litter / clutch size

3 eggs

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachymarptis_melba