Swifts: High Speed,
High Altitude Flyers
 Imagine mating while tumbling
end over end and falling 500 feet through the air. No, doesn't appeal to me either! But
that's what white throated swifts seem to do. As for nesting, Phil Unitt's Bird Atlas
Project handbook mentions nest sites under freeway bridges as well as more traditional
spots like the cliffs at Torrey Pines. Some nest sites such as one site in Nevada are used
over long periods of time, over 54 years, longer than the life spans of the individual
birds.
Swifts are a challenge to rehabilitators. The nestlings
snap food from the parents' mouths and don't gape as do the songbirds. This makes feeding
them a challenge. Luckily like the rest of our orphans, they learn to grab a syringe and
swallow cat food, albeit with some reluctance. High flying bugs probably taste much
better!
Swifts cannot fly from the ground since their legs are
small and weak, whilst their sharp clawed feet are well adapted to clinging to vertical
surfaces. Hence their release has to be from a height of a couple of stories at least.
Wild juvenile swifts fly from their high nest, tumble out and catch insects on the wing.
No help from the parents, just instinctive aerial feeding! The white throated swift is
possibly the fastest flying North American bird, and has been seen escaping from a
peregrine in a chase.
Fledgling swifts such as the one pictured, come to us from
"the ground under the 805 overpass near route 5," or from the ground near very
tall buildings. A few adults are grounded (probably at dusk when misjudging distances) and
try to climb upwards, instinctively trying to get to a height from which they can once
more launch themselves back into the sky.
Launching a swift from a second story building or from the
bluffs at Torrey Pines is not for the faint hearted, since even flight tested in a 20 foot
aviary, swifts make four to six wingbeats and hit the netting end to end in what seems a
heartbeat - hard to judge whether their extended flight will be successful. Just as well
for our nerves that we get only half a dozen a year!
By Meryl Faulkner
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