Swallows | Hirundinidae

Zwaluwen | Golondrinas y aviones

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. They are migrants that gather over reedbeds and wires in late summer; unlike the swifts they resemble in flight, these are ordinary songbirds that will settle on a wire.