Pallid Swift (Apus pallidus)
About the Pallid Swift
The pallid swift (Apus pallidus) is a swift (order Apodiformes). Swifts have very short legs which they use only for clinging to vertical surfaces. The genus name Apus is Latin for a swift, thought by the ancients to be a type of swallow with no feet (from Ancient Greek α, a, "without", and πούς, pous, "foot"), and pallidus is Latin for "pale". Like other swifts they never settle voluntarily on the ground, but spend most of their lives in the air, living on the insects they catch in their beaks. They drink on the wing. The pallid swift was first described by English naturalist George Ernest Shelley in 1870.
A real field recording of the Pallid Swift. Press play and focus on the rhythm and pitch of each phrase.
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Our streaming copies are mirrored from the original xeno-canto file and transcoded to 96 kbps mono — a modification, so we note it here; the licence for each recording is named in its credit below.
1 recording on this page · licensed Public Domain / CC0 ×1 · mirrored on this server, free for commercial reuse · recorded in Algeria, Belgium, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy and elsewhere · xeno-canto lists 458 recordings for this species in total.
Similar species
- African Black SwiftApus barbatusprofile
- Bates's SwiftApus batesiprofile
- Bradfield's SwiftApus bradfieldiprofile
- Common SwiftApus apusrecording
- Cook's SwiftApus cookiprofile
- Horus SwiftApus horusprofile
Species grouped by shared genus, family and range.