Amazing Bird Facts : The Bird That Flies for Months Without Landing

Amazing Bird Facts : Meet the Common Swift That Stays in the Air for 10 Months

Imagine flying for months straight without ever setting foot on the ground. Sounds like a dream or a nightmare if you’re human, right? But for the ‘Common Swift’, it’s just life.

This little bird called the ‘Common Swift’ (scientific name Apus apus) breaks the endurance record. Scientists in Sweden hooked up tiny motion trackers to 13 swifts, and found something wild: these birds stay in the air for nearly 10 months straight, from leaving their breeding grounds in summer all the way through migration and the non-breeding season—and then return to land only to raise their young.

Let’s let that sink in. Ten months flying. Most of those birds never landed once. Even the few that did stop, still spent more than 99 percent of their time airborne.

They don’t just coast. The swift keeps flapping most of the time. That makes it even more mind-blowing than an albatross that glides for hours without flapping or a hummingbird that flaps billions of times relative to its body length.

So how do they eat, sleep, or even stay in one piece for so long?

Swifts use something called unihemispheric slow-wave sleep. It’s like having a superpower. Half their brain goes to sleep while the other half stays awake and alert. The eye connected to the sleeping side closes, while the other eye stays open, watching for danger.

Picture trying to take a nap while riding a bike. Sounds impossible, right? But swifts do it thousands of feet in the air. They sleep for just a few seconds at a time while gliding on warm air currents. When they need to flap their wings again, the sleeping half of their brain wakes up instantly.

Frigate birds, another long-distance flyer, do something similar. But even they can’t match the swift’s record. Frigates sleep less than 3% of their flying time and need to catch up on sleep when they land. Swifts just keep going.

Dinner at 100 Miles Per Hour

Eating while flying presents its own challenges. Swifts are like aerial vacuum cleaners, scooping up tiny insects as they zoom through the sky. Their menu includes mosquitoes, flies, flying ants, small beetles, and even spiders that get caught in air currents.

During breeding season, parent swifts catch up to 10,000 insects per day to feed their babies. They store the insects in a special pouch in their throat, creating what looks like a small ball of food. When they return to the nest, they spit up this protein-packed meal for their chicks.

The swift’s mouth works like a scoop. As they fly at speeds up to 25 mph, they simply open wide and let the insects fly right in. It’s fast food at its finest.

Side note – sometimes these birds climb like mad in the evening and call out in the sky. Those are “screaming parties.” Scientists think this might tie into their sleep habits, navigation, or just fun bird behaviour.

Another quirky detail: some birds that didn’t land had shed all their old flight feathers and grown new ones, while birds that landed sometimes hadn’t done that shedding yet. That might hint at small differences in health or parasite load, which could affect their flying habits.

Where do these swifts spend those ten months?

They breed in Europe around June and July, then head off, often over the Sahara, into sub-Saharan Africa, where they spend the non-breeding season. They don’t seem to roost anywhere along the way.

When they’re on land, swifts usually nest on vertical surfaces. They used to choose hollow trees, but now they find spots in chimneys, air shafts, or old wells. That’s how the “chimney swift” gets its name. Without those safe vertical perches, they’d be pretty helpless on the ground—they’re built for air, not walking.

So what’s the bottom line? These birds are built for constant flight – from feeding to sleeping to even mating, it all happens in mid-air. They can’t land without risking injury or predators. And they’ve evolved to live that way beautifully.

It’s a real-life superhero story. No landing pads. No breaks. Just the open sky. For ten whole months.

Next time you see a small, dark bird screaming in the sky, remember: that little guy might be an extreme flight champ, built for an aerial life most of us can’t imagine.