Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica)
About the Chimney Swift
The chimney swift (Chaetura pelagica) is a bird belonging to the swift family Apodidae. A member of the genus Chaetura, it is closely related to both Vaux's swift and Chapman's swift; in the past, the three were sometimes considered to be conspecific. It has no subspecies. The chimney swift is a medium-sized, sooty gray bird with very long, slender wings and very short legs. Like all swifts, it is incapable of perching on flat surfaces, and can only perch on vertical surfaces. Many fly around all day and only come down at night when roosting.
A real field recording of the Chimney Swift. Press play and focus on the rhythm and pitch of each phrase.
Listen
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.
3 recordings on this page · licensed CC BY-SA ×3 · mirrored on this server, free for commercial reuse · recorded in Canada, Ecuador, United States · xeno-canto lists 78 recordings for this species in total.
Similar species
- Band-rumped SwiftChaetura spinicaudusprofile
- Chapman's SwiftChaetura chapmaniprofile
- Costa Rican SwiftChaetura fumosaprofile
- Grey-rumped SwiftChaetura cinereiventrisrecording
- Lesser Antillean SwiftChaetura martinicaprofile
- Pale-rumped SwiftChaetura egregiaprofile
Species grouped by shared genus, family and range.