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Alpine Swift

Alpine Swift

Tachymarptis melba

Identify the Alpine Swift by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

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The Alpine Swift is a large, powerful swift of southern Europe, Africa and Asia that breeds on cliffs in mountains from southern Europe to the Himalayas and on old buildings in Mediterranean towns. It is brown above with a white throat and a large white belly patch bordered by a dark breast band. European birds winter in Africa, and like other swifts it spends almost its whole life on the wing.

Did you know?

  • It rarely lands anywhere except its nest, catching all its food on the wing.
  • Its chicks can become torpid in bad weather when food is short.

Voice

Flight call

About the species

Identification

A swift clearly larger than Common Swift, with brown upperparts but a large white belly and throat patch separated by a dark breast band. Its flight is powerful, with slower wingbeats than Common Swift, and its call is a high, trilling twitter.

Family

Apodidae

Size

Medium (thrush)

Colours

brown, white, grey, black

About the habitat

Steep cliffs, gorges and caves in mountains and on coasts, and old buildings in towns; it forages widely over open country.

Diet

Flying insects caught in continuous flight, often high in the air.

Behaviour

A master flier with long, swept-back wings and a short, forked tail; it flies more slowly but more powerfully than smaller swifts. It gives loud, trilling twitters, often in screaming flocks over towns. It nests in colonies on cliffs, in caves and old buildings, returning to the same sites each year, and pairs usually stay together for life. It clings to vertical surfaces with its tiny legs and almost never lands on the ground.

Sources

Photo: Lefteris Stavrakas, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Βουνοσταχτάρα Alpine Swift Tachymarptis melba.jpg

Sound: tsilianidis saky, XC483586, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/483586

Text: Wikipedia (English), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_swift

See also