Swifts | Apodiformes

Gierzwaluwachtigen | Vencejos

Small birds built almost wholly for flight: the upper arm bone is extremely short and the hand long, so that the wing is a narrow, stiff blade driven from the shoulder joint and barely bent at the elbow. The feet are small and weak, with short legs and sharp claws; they are no use for walking and serve to hook the bird onto a vertical surface. Energy use is high, and in cold weather with few insects both young and adults can let their body temperature fall and pass into torpor until conditions turn. The clutch is small and the eggs white; the young hatch naked and helpless and stay in the nest a long time for their size.

Families in this order

Swifts | Apodidae16 speciesA cigar-shaped body, long scythe-like wings held stiff in a glide, and a short tail, square or forked; the bill is tiny, but the gape tears open to below the eye, so that the head itself is the net. Everything happens in the air: the catching of drifting insects and spiders, drinking, bathing, picking up nest material, mating, and outside the breeding season sleeping too, circling at height. The catch is bound together in the throat with saliva into a ball and given to the chick in one delivery; the nest is a shallow cup of material caught on the wing, also glued with saliva, in a crevice, under a roof tile or in a chimney. One to three white eggs, a long stay in the nest, and a fledgling that leaves with a fully grown wing and is independent from that moment; the four short toes carry strong hooked claws and in many species can all be turned to point forward.
Hummingbirds | Trochilidae108 speciesWith more than a hundred species in nearly fifty genera, the hummingbirds are one of the richest families of Mexico and Central America, present from desert scrub and gardens to cloud forest and high mountains; the hermits live in the shade of the rainforest understorey, most other species in open woodland, edges and flowering canopies. They are the smallest birds in the world, with a needle-like bill and a long tongue, forked at the tip, with which they lap up nectar. The wing turns almost entirely from the shoulder, so that they can hover and even fly backwards, beating dozens of times a second. This requires an exceptionally high metabolism; at night they can enter torpor and lower their body temperature to save energy. Besides nectar they take small insects and spiders, the main source of protein for the young. The feet are so small that they cannot walk, only perch. In many species the male has a metallic gorget or crown that flashes only at the right angle. The female alone builds a tiny cup of plant down and spider silk, often covered with lichen, and lays two white eggs. Several North American species winter in the region.