Swallows | Hirundinidae

Zwaluwen | Golondrinas y aviones | Swallows

Birds that take all their food in the air and are built entirely for it: long pointed wings, a very short flat bill with an enormous gape, and small weak feet on short legs, good for perching but hardly for walking. They drink and bathe by skimming low over water. The nest is a cup or closed flask of mud pellets against a wall, a self-dug tunnel in a steep bank, or a cavity — often in colonies. This region holds 28 species in ten genera, from the coastal desert and the rivers of the Amazonian lowlands up to the páramo, where Brown-bellied Swallow hunts along rock faces. Most are resident, but Barn Swallow and a few other species come from the north to spend the winter here; unlike the swifts they resemble in flight, these are ordinary songbirds that will settle on a wire.