Species group · Birds

Swifts

WAnimals has 6 species of swift, in the family Apodidae.

6 species

1 family

123 countries

303 parks

All 6 species of swifts on WAnimals

Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.

4 Least Concern2 Vulnerable

2 species in this group are in a threatened category according to the IUCN.

Recorded in 123 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:

It can stay airborne for more than 6 months at a stretch without landing.
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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.
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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.
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It nests behind waterfalls: it fixes the nest to the wet rock behind the curtain of water, and the adults fly through the fall to come and go, a place practically inaccessible to any predator.
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Its flocks range tens of kilometres a day following concentrations of insects, and can appear in and vanish from a valley within hours.
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Like all swifts it can barely perch: its feet serve only to cling to vertical surfaces, and it spends practically its whole life in the air.
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Its wintering destination was a mystery until 2012, when tiny geolocators revealed that the Californian populations fly to western Amazonia, more than seven thousand kilometres away.