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African Black Swift (Apus barbatus)

African Black Swift
Photo: Trevor Hardaker, Cape Town, South Africa via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 — free for commercial reuse.

About the African Black Swift

The African black swift (Apus barbatus), also known as the African swift or black swift, is a medium-sized bird in the swift family. It breeds in Africa discontinuously from Liberia, Cameroon, Zaire, Uganda and Kenya southwards to South Africa. The "black swifts" of Madagascar and the Comoros are either taken as two subspecies of the African black swift, or otherwise deemed a full species, the Malagasy black swift.

Source: African black swift on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA
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No audio on this page yet

We only publish recordings we may use commercially, because this site is supported by ads. xeno-canto lists 22 recordings for this species: 2 CC BY-NC-SA. None of them permits commercial use, so there is no player here — the page is kept as a profile so the bird is not missing from the guide.

As soon as someone uploads a freely licensed recording, we mirror it and the player appears here.

Listed as recorded in Kenya, Madagascar, South Africa, Zimbabwe in the xeno-canto catalogue.

Related species you can hear

This species has no recording here yet — these relatives do, so you can hear what the family sounds like.