The Pacific swift is a species of bird that is part of the Swift family. It breeds in eastern Asia and is strongly migratory, spending the northern hemisphere’s winter in Southeast Asia and Australia. The sexes are identical in appearance, although young birds can be identified by pale fringes to the wing feathers that are absent in adults.
About Pacific swift in brief
The Pacific swift is a species of bird that is part of the Swift family. It breeds in eastern Asia and is strongly migratory, spending the northern hemisphere’s winter in Southeast Asia and Australia. The sexes are identical in appearance, although young birds can be identified by pale fringes to the wing feathers that are absent in adults. The Pacific swift has a large population and extensive breeding area, and faces few threats from predators or human activities. It is classed as being of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It has occurred as far afield as the US and New Zealand, and it is a very rare vagrant in Europe. The swift is in the Old World genus Apus, which is characterised by dark, glossy plumage, a forked tail and sharply pointed wings. Like all members of its family, the Pacific swift feeds exclusively on insects caught in flight. It tends to hunt higher than most of its relatives other than the white-throated needletail. The eyes are small and the bill and very short legs are very short. The tail and the upperwings are black, and the underwings are brown and brown. The black, white and grey rump is apart from a somewhat grey head and a white rump band and a darker grey underparts. The nest is a half-cup of dry grass and other fine material that is gathered in flight, cemented with saliva and attached to a vertical surface.
The two or three white eggs are incubated for about seventeen days to hatching. The chicks have a long but variable period in the nest before they are fully fledged, and can survive for days without being fed by metabolising body fat. At 17–18 cm in length, thePacific swift is the largest of the Apus swifts. It has a 43-to-54-cm wingspan. Females are slightly heavier than males, averaging 44.5 g against 42. 5 g. The general shape and blackish plumage recall its relative, the common swift, although the head is protruding and with a protruding head. The upper tail is deeper and the rump of the fork of the tail is wider, and the upper tail and rump are apart from the tail apart from the white band and the black, black and white underparts are black. This swift was first described by John Latham in 1801 as Hirundo pacifica. The long-tailed birds from the Tibetan Plateau with a narrow white throat patch are separated as Salim Ali’s swift. The small swifts with narrow white rumps from the Himalayas of India, Nepal and Bhutan become Blyth’s swift, A. leuconyx. The remaining subspecies are the nominate A. p. pacificus and the southern race A p. kurodae.
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This page is based on the article Pacific swift published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
